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Learning Robotics using Python

By : Lentin Joseph

3.1 (8)

Buy this Book

Learning Robotics using Python

3.1 (8)

By: Lentin Joseph

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Robot Operating System (ROS) is one of the most popular robotics software frameworks in research and industry. It has various features for implementing different capabilities in a robot without implementing them from scratch. This book starts by showing you the fundamentals of ROS so you understand the basics of differential robots. Then, you'll learn about robot modeling and how to design and simulate it using ROS. Moving on, we'll design robot hardware and interfacing actuators. Then, you'll learn to configure and program depth sensors and LIDARs using ROS. Finally, you'll create a GUI for your robot using the Qt framework. By the end of this tutorial, you'll have a clear idea of how to integrate and assemble everything into a robot and how to bundle the software package.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

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Free Chapter

Getting Started with Robot Operating System

Technical requirements

Introduction to ROS

Summary

Questions

Understanding the Basics of Differential Robots

Mathematical modeling of the robot

Forward kinematics of a differential robot

Inverse kinematics

Summary

Questions

Further information

Modeling the Differential Drive Robot

Technical requirements

Requirements of a service robot

Robot drive mechanism

Installing LibreCAD, Blender, and MeshLab

Creating 2D CAD drawing of a robot using LibreCAD

Working with a 3D model of the robot using Blender

Creating a URDF model of the robot

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Simulating a Differential Drive Robot Using ROS

Technical requirements

Getting started with the Gazebo simulator

Working with a TurtleBot 2 simulation

Creating a simulation of Chefbot

Visualizing the robot sensor data

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Designing ChefBot Hardware and Circuits

Technical requirements

Specifications of the ChefBot's hardware

Block diagram of the robot

How ChefBot’s hardware works’?

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Interfacing Actuators and Sensors to the Robot Controller

Technical requirements

Interfacing DC geared motor to Tiva C LaunchPad

Interfacing quadrature encoder with Tiva C Launchpad

Working with Dynamixel actuators

Working with ultrasonic distance sensors

Working with the IR proximity sensor

Working with Inertial Measurement Units

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Interfacing Vision Sensors with ROS

Technical requirements

List of robotic vision sensors and image libraries

Introduction to OpenCV, OpenNI, and PCL

Programming Kinect with Python using ROS, OpenCV, and OpenNI

Interfacing Orbbec Astra with ROS

Working with point clouds using Kinect, ROS, OpenNI, and PCL

Conversion of point cloud data to laser scan data

Working with SLAM using ROS and Kinect

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Building ChefBot Hardware and the Integration of Software

Technical requirements

Building ChefBot hardware

Configuring ChefBot PC and setting ChefBot ROS packages

Interfacing ChefBot sensors to the Tiva-C LaunchPad

Writing a ROS Python driver for ChefBot

Understanding ChefBot ROS launch files

Working with ChefBot Python nodes and launch files

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Designing a GUI for a Robot Using Qt and Python

Technical requirements

Installing Qt on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Working with Python bindings of Qt

Working with PyQt and PySide

Working with ChefBot's control GUI

Installing and working with rqt in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Summary

Questions

Further reading

Assessments

Chapter 1, Getting Started with the Robot Operating System

Chapter 2, Understanding the Basics of Differential Robots

Chapter 3, Modeling the Differential Drive Robot

Chapter 4, Simulating a Differential Drive Robot Using ROS

Chapter 5, Designing ChefBot Hardware and Circuits

Chapter 6, Interfacing Actuators and Sensors to the Robot Controller

Chapter 7, Interfacing Vision Sensors with ROS

Chapter 8, Building ChefBot Hardware and Integration of Software

Chapter 9, Designing a GUI for a Robot Using Qt and Python

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Working with a TurtleBot 2 simulation

After working with Gazebo, now it's time to run a simulation on it and work with some robots. One of the popular robots available for education and research is TurtleBot. The TurtleBot software was developed within the ROS framework, and there is a good simulation of its operations available in Gazebo. The popular versions of TurtleBot are TurtleBot 2 and 3. We will learn about TurtleBot 2 in this section because our development of Chefbot was inspired by its design.

Installing TurtleBot 2 simulation packages in Ubuntu 16.04 is straightforward. You can use the following command to install TurtleBot 2 simulation packages for Gazebo:

    $ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-turtlebot-gazebo

After installing the packages, we can start running the simulation. There are several launch files inside the turtlebot-gazebo packages that have different...