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ROS Robotics Projects

By : Lentin Joseph

4.1 (11)

ROS Robotics Projects

4.1 (11)

By: Lentin Joseph

Overview of this book

Robot Operating System is one of the most widely used software frameworks for robotic research and for companies to model, simulate, and prototype robots. Applying your knowledge of ROS to actual robotics is much more difficult than people realize, but this title will give you what you need to create your own robotics in no time! This book is packed with over 14 ROS robotics projects that can be prototyped without requiring a lot of hardware. The book starts with an introduction of ROS and its installation procedure. After discussing the basics, you’ll be taken through great projects, such as building a self-driving car, an autonomous mobile robot, and image recognition using deep learning and ROS. You can find ROS robotics applications for beginner, intermediate, and expert levels inside! This book will be the perfect companion for a robotics enthusiast who really wants to do something big in the field.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Getting Started with ROS Robotics Application Development

1. Getting Started with ROS Robotics Application Development

Getting started with ROS

Fundamentals of ROS

ROS client libraries

ROS tools

Simulators of ROS

Installing ROS kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Setting ROS on VirtualBox

Setting the ROS workspace

Opportunities for ROS in industries and research

Questions

Summary

2. Face Detection and Tracking Using ROS, OpenCV and Dynamixel Servos

2. Face Detection and Tracking Using ROS, OpenCV and Dynamixel Servos

Overview of the project

Hardware and software prerequisites

Interfacing Dynamixel with ROS

Creating face tracker ROS packages

Working with the face-tracking ROS package

Questions

Summary

3. Building a Siri-Like Chatbot in ROS

3. Building a Siri-Like Chatbot in ROS

Social robots

Building social robots

Prerequisites

Getting started with AIML

Questions

Summary

4. Controlling Embedded Boards Using ROS

4. Controlling Embedded Boards Using ROS

Getting started with popular embedded boards

Interfacing Arduino with ROS

Running ROS on Raspberry Pi and Odroid boards

Questions

Summary

5. Teleoperate a Robot Using Hand Gestures

5. Teleoperate a Robot Using Hand Gestures

Teleoperating ROS Turtle using a keyboard

Teleoperating using hand gestures

Setting up the project

Interfacing the MPU-9250 with the Arduino and ROS

Visualizing IMU TF in Rviz

Converting IMU data into twist messages

Integration and final run

Teleoperating using an Android phone

Questions

Summary

6. Object Detection and Recognition

6. Object Detection and Recognition

Getting started with object detection and recognition

The find_object_2d package in ROS

Getting started with 3D object recognition

Introduction to 3D object recognition packages in ROS

Detecting and recognizing objects from 3D meshes

Recognizing objects

Questions

Summary

7. Deep Learning Using ROS and TensorFlow

7. Deep Learning Using ROS and TensorFlow

Introduction to deep learning and its applications

Deep learning for robotics

Deep learning libraries

Getting started with TensorFlow

Image recognition using ROS and TensorFlow

Introducing to scikit-learn

Introducing to SVM and its application in robotics

Questions

Summary

8. ROS on MATLAB and Android

8. ROS on MATLAB and Android

Getting started with the ROS-MATLAB interface

Setting Robotics Toolbox in MATLAB

Communicating from MATLAB to a ROS network

Controlling a ROS robot from MATLAB

Getting started with Android and its ROS interface

Installing the ROS-Android interface

Playing with ROS-Android applications

Code walkthrough

Creating basic applications using the ROS-Android interface

Questions

Summary

9. Building an Autonomous Mobile Robot

9. Building an Autonomous Mobile Robot

Robot specification and design overview

Designing and selecting the motors and wheels for the robot

Building 2D and 3D models of the robot body

Simulating the robot model in Gazebo

Mathematical model of a differential drive robot

Designing and building actual robot hardware

Interfacing robot hardware with ROS

Gmapping and localization in Chefbot

Questions

Summary

10. Creating a Self-Driving Car Using ROS

10. Creating a Self-Driving Car Using ROS

Getting started with self-driving cars

Functional block diagram of a typical self-driving car

Software block diagram of self-driving cars

Simulating the Velodyne LIDAR

Interfacing Velodyne sensors with ROS

Simulating a laser scanner

Explaining the simulation code

Interfacing laser scanners with ROS

Simulating stereo and mono cameras in Gazebo

Interfacing cameras with ROS

Simulating GPS in Gazebo

Simulating IMU on Gazebo

Interfacing IMUs with ROS

Simulating an ultrasonic sensor in Gazebo

Low-cost LIDAR sensors

Simulating a self-driving car with sensors in Gazebo

Interfacing a DBW car with ROS

Introducing the Udacity open source self-driving car project

Questions

Summary

11. Teleoperating a Robot Using a VR Headset and Leap Motion

11. Teleoperating a Robot Using a VR Headset and Leap Motion

Getting started with a VR headset and Leap Motion

Project prerequisites

Design and working of the project

Installing the Leap Motion SDK on Ubuntu 14.04.5

Visualizing Leap Motion data in Rviz

Creating a teleoperation node using the Leap Motion controller

Building a ROS-VR Android application

Working with the ROS-VR application and interfacing with Gazebo

Working with TurtleBot simulation in VR

Troubleshooting the ROS-VR application

Integrating ROS-VR application and Leap Motion teleoperation

Questions

Summary

12. Controlling Your Robots over the Web

12. Controlling Your Robots over the Web

Getting started with ROS web packages

Setting up ROS web packages on ROS Kinetic

Installing tf2_web_republisher on ROS Kinetic

Teleoperating and visualizing a robot on a web browser

Controlling robot joints from a web browser

Web-based speech-controlled robot

Running a speech-controlled robot application

Questions

Summary

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Setting the ROS workspace

After setting ROS on a real PC or VirtualBox, the next step is to create a workspace in ROS. The ROS workspace is a place where we keep ROS packages. In the latest ROS distribution, we use a catkin-based workspace to build and install ROS packages. The catkin system (http://wiki.ros.org/catkin) is the official build system of ROS, which helps us build the source code into a target executable or libraries inside the ROS workspace.

Building an ROS workspace is an easy task; just open a Terminal and follow these instructions:

The first step is to create an empty workspace folder and another folder called src to store the ROS package in. The following command will do this job. The workspace folder name here is catkin_ws.
```
$ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
```
Switch to the src folder and execute the catkin_init_workspace command. This command will initialize a catkin workspace in the current src folder. We can now start creating packages inside the src folder.
```
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ catkin_init_workspace
```
After initializing the catkin workspace, we can build the packages inside the workspace using the following command, catkin_make. We can build the workspace even without any packages.
```
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin_make
```
This will create additional folders called build and devel inside the ROS workspace:

Figure 19: The catkin workspace folders
Once you've built the workspace, in order to access packages inside the workspace we should add the workspace environment to our .bashrc file using the following command:
```
$ echo "source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> 
      ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc
```
If everything is done, you can verify it by executing the following command. This command will print the entire ROS package path. If your workspace path is in the output, you are done!
```
$ echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH
```
Figure 20: The ROS package path

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