Design, build and simulate complex robots using Robot Operating System and master its out-of-the-box functionalities
The area of robotics is gaining huge momentum among corporate people, researchers, hobbyists, and students. The major challenge in robotics is its controlling software. The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a modular software platform to develop generic robotic applications.
This book discusses the advanced concepts in robotics and how to program using ROS. It starts with deep overview of the ROS framework, which will give you a clear idea of how ROS really works. During the course of the book, you will learn how to build models of complex robots, and simulate and interface the robot using the ROS MoveIt motion planning library and ROS navigation stacks.
After discussing robot manipulation and navigation in robots, you will get to grips with the interfacing I/O boards, sensors, and actuators of ROS. One of the essential ingredients of robots are vision sensors, and an entire chapter is dedicated to the vision sensor, its interfacing in ROS, and its programming. You will discuss the hardware interfacing and simulation of complex robot to ROS and ROS Industrial (Package used for interfacing industrial robots). Finally, you will get to know the best practices to follow when programming using ROS.
CEO/Founder of Qboticslabs
Lentin Joseph is an Author, Entrepreneur, electronics engineer, robotics enthusiast, machine vision expert, embedded programmer, and the founder and CEO of a robotics start-up called Qbotics Labs from India. He got his Bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering at the Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), Kerala.
In his final year engineering project, he created a Social robot, which can interact with people. The project was a huge success and got mentioned in visual and print media. The main feature of this robot was that it could communicate with people and reply intelligently. It also has some image-processing capabilities, such as face, motion, and color detection. The entire project was implemented using the Python programming language. His interest in robotics, image processing, and Python began this project.
After graduation, he worked at a start-up company based on robotics and image processing for 3 years. In the meantime, he learned famous robotic software platforms—such as Robot Operating system (ROS), V-REP, and Actin (a robotic simulation tool)—and image processing libraries, such as OpenCV, OpenNI, and PCL. He also knows about robot 3D designing, embedded programming on Arduino, and Stellaris Launchpad.
After 3 years of work experience, he started a new company called Qbotics Labs, which is mainly focused on research to build great products in domains such as wearable technology, robotics, machine vision, green technology, and online education. He maintains a personal website and a technology blog called Technolabsz. He publishes his works on his tech blog. He was a speaker at PyCon2013 India, and he spoke on the topic of Application of Python in Robotics.
He is an author of book called "Learning Robotics using Python" published by PACKT. The book was about to building an autonomous mobile robot using ROS and OpenCV. The book was launched in ICRA 2015 and got featured in ROS blog, Robohub, OpenCV and Python website etc.
He was a finalist of ICRA 2015 challenge called HRATC He has also completed several MOOCs in robotics and image processing.
You can see the details explanations of contents in each Chapters on this book.