Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - Second Edition: Design, build, and simulate complex robots using the Robot Operating System

570 Pages·2018·43.368 MB·English

by  Lentin Joseph, Jonathan Cacace

Mastering ROS for Robotics
Programming
Second Edition
Design, build, and simulate complex robots using the Robot
Operating System
Lentin Joseph
Jonathan Cacace
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming
Second Edition
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First published: December 2015
Second edition: February 2018
Production reference: 1220218
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ISBN 978-1-78847-895-3
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Contributors
About the authors
Lentin Joseph is an author and robotics entrepreneur from India. He runs a robotics
software company called Qbotics Labs in India. He has 7 years of experience in the robotics
domain especially in Robot Operating System, Open-CV, and PCL.
He has authored three books in ROS, namely, Learning Robotics using Python, Mastering ROS
for Robotics Programming, and ROS Robotics Projects.
He is currently pursuing his masters in Robotics from India and is also doing research in
Robotics Institute, CMU, USA.
Jonathan Cacace was born in Naples, Italy, on December 13, 1987. He received his Master’s
degree in computer science, and a Ph.D. degree in Information and Automation
Engineering, from the University of Naples Federico II.
Currently, he is a postdoc at the PRISMA Lab of the University of Naples Federico II. He is
involved in different research projects focused on industrial and service robotics in which
he has developed several ROS-based applications integrating robot perception and control.
I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to my friends, my parents and all the
people I met during my life who contributed to enrich my life and my knowledge.
About the reviewer
Ruixiang Du is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic
Institute (WPI). He currently works in the Autonomy, Control and Estimation Laboratory
with a research focus on the motion planning and control of autonomous mobile robots. He
received a bachelor’s degree in Automation from North China Electric Power University in
2011 and a master’s degree in Robotics Engineering from WPI in 2013.
Ruixiang has general interests in robotics and in real-time and embedded systems. He has
worked on various robotic projects with robot platforms ranging from medical robots,
unmanned aerial/ground vehicles, to humanoid robots. He was a member of Team WPI-
CMU for the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to ROS 7
Why should we learn ROS? 7
Why we prefer ROS for robots 8
Why some do not prefer ROS for robots 10
Understanding the ROS filesystem level 11
ROS packages 13
ROS metapackages 15
ROS messages 16
The ROS services 18
Understanding the ROS computation graph level 19
ROS nodes 21
ROS messages 22
ROS topics 23
ROS services 24
ROS bags 25
The ROS Master 26
Using the ROS parameter 28
ROS community level 29
What are the prerequisites for starting with ROS? 30
Running the ROS Master and the ROS parameter server 30
Checking the roscore command output 32
Questions 33
Summary 34
Chapter 2: Getting Started with ROS Programming 35
Creating a ROS package 35
Working with ROS topics 38
Creating ROS nodes 38
Building the nodes 41
Adding custom msg and srv files 44
Table of Contents
Working with ROS services 47
Working with ROS actionlib 52
Creating the ROS action server 53
Creating the ROS action client 55
Building the ROS action server and client 56
Creating launch files 59
Applications of topics, services, and actionlib 62
Maintaining the ROS package 62
Releasing your ROS package 63
Preparing the ROS package for the release 64
Releasing our package 64
Creating a Wiki page for your ROS package 67
Questions 70
Summary 71
Chapter 3: Working with 3D Robot Modeling in ROS 72
ROS packages for robot modeling 73
Understanding robot modeling using URDF 74
Creating the ROS package for the robot description 78
Creating our first URDF model 78
Explaining the URDF file 81
Visualizing the 3D robot model in RViz 83
Interacting with pan-and-tilt joints 84
Adding physical and collision properties to a URDF model 85
Understanding robot modeling using xacro 86
Using properties 87
Using the math expression 87
Using macros 87
Converting xacro to URDF 88
Creating the robot description for a seven DOF robot manipulator 89
Arm specification 90
Type of joints 90
Explaining the xacro model of the seven DOF arm 91
Using constants 91
Using macros 91
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Including other xacro files 92
Using meshes in the link 93
Working with the robot gripper 93
Viewing the seven DOF arm in RViz 94
Understanding joint state publisher 96
Understanding robot state publisher 96
Creating a robot model for the differential drive mobile robot 98
Questions 103
Summary 103
Chapter 4: Simulating Robots Using ROS and Gazebo 104
Simulating the robotic arm using Gazebo and ROS 105
Creating the robotic arm simulation model for Gazebo 106
Adding colors and textures to the Gazebo robot model 109
Adding transmission tags to actuate the model 109
Adding the gazebo_ros_control plugin 110
Adding a 3D vision sensor to Gazebo 110
Simulating the robotic arm with Xtion Pro 112
Visualizing the 3D sensor data 113
Moving robot joints using ROS controllers in Gazebo 115
Understanding the ros_control packages 116
Different types of ROS controllers and hardware interfaces 116
How the ROS controller interacts with Gazebo 117
Interfacing joint state controllers and joint position controllers to the arm 119
Launching the ROS controllers with Gazebo 120
Moving the robot joints 122
Simulating a differential wheeled robot in Gazebo 123
Adding the laser scanner to Gazebo 125
Moving the mobile robot in Gazebo 126
Adding joint state publishers in the launch file 128
Adding the ROS teleop node 128
Questions 130
Summary 131
Chapter 5: Simulating Robots Using ROS and V-REP 132
Setting up V-REP with ROS 133
Understanding the vrep_plugin 137
[ iii ]
Table of Contents
Interacting with V-REP using ROS services 139
Interacting with V-REP using ROS topics 141
Simulating the robotic arm using V-REP and ROS 146
Adding the ROS interface to V-REP joint controllers 149
Simulating a differential wheeled robot in V-REP 153
Adding a laser sensor to V-REP 156
Adding a 3D vision sensor to V-REP 159
Questions 161
Summary 161
Chapter 6: Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack 162
Installing MoveIt! 163
MoveIt! architecture 163
The move_group node 164
Motion planning using MoveIt! 166
Motion planning request adapters 168
MoveIt! planning scene 168
MoveIt! kinematics handling 169
MoveIt! collision checking 170
Generating MoveIt! configuration package using the Setup
Assistant tool 171
Step 1 – Launching the Setup Assistant tool 171
Step 2 – Generating the Self-Collision matrix 173
Step 3 – Adding virtual joints 174
Step 4 – Adding planning groups 175
Step 5 – Adding the robot poses 176
Step 6 – Setting up the robot end effector 177
Step 7 – Adding passive joints 178
Step 8 – Author information 178
Step 9 – Generating configuration files 178
Motion planning of robot in RViz using MoveIt! configuration
package 180
Using the RViz Motion Planning plugin 181
Interfacing the MoveIt! configuration package to Gazebo 184
Step 1 – Writing the controller configuration file for MoveIt! 185
Step 2 – Creating the controller launch files 186
Step 3 – Creating the controller configuration file for Gazebo 186
[ iv ]