Programming Robots with ROS: A Practical Introduction to the Robot Operating System

Want to develop novel robot applications, but don’t know how to write a mapping or object recognition system? You’re certainly not alone, but you’re not without help. By combining real-world examples with valuable knowledge from the Robot Operating System (ROS) community, this practical book provides a set of motivating recipes for solving specific robotics use cases. Ideal for wide range of robot enthusiasts, from students in robotics clubs to professional robotics scientists and engineers, each recipe describes a complete solution using ROS open source libraries and tools. You’ll not only learn how to complete the task described in the recipe, but also how to configure and recombine the components for other tasks. All recipes include Python code. No robot hardware is required to get started, just experience with Python and Linux. This book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students in introductory robotics courses. "Want to develop novel robot applications, but don't know how to write a mapping or object-recognition system? You're not alone, but you're certainly not without help. By combining real-world examples with valuable knowledge from the Robot Operating System (ROS) community, this practical book provides a set of motivating recipes for solving specific robotics use cases. Ideal for enthusiasts, from students in robotics clubs to professional robotics scientists and engineers, each recipe describes a complete solution using ROS open source libraries and tools. You'll learn how to complete tasks described in the recipes, as well as how to configure and recombine components for other tasks. If you're familiar with Python, you're ready to go."--Www.amazon.com. Chapter 3. Topics; Publishing to a Topic; Checking That Everything Works as Expected; Subscribing to a Topic; Checking That Everything Works as Expected; Latched Topics; Defining Your Own Message Types; Defining a New Message; Using Your New Message; When Should You Make a New Message Type?; Mixing Publishers and Subscribers; Summary; Chapter 4. Services; Defining a Service; Implementing a Service; Checking That Everything Works as Expected; Other Ways of Returning Values from a Service; Using a Service; Checking That Everything Works as Expected; Other Ways to Call Services; Summary