Hands-On ROS for Robotics Programming: Program highly autonomous and AI-capable mobile robots powered by ROS

by Bernardo Ronquillo Japón

Take your ROS skills to the next level by implementing complex robot structures in a ROS simulation Connecting a physical robot to a robot simulation using the Robot Operating System (ROS) infrastructure is one of the most common challenges faced by ROS engineers. With this book, you'll learn how to simulate a robot in a virtual environment and achieve desired behavior in equivalent real-world scenarios. This book starts with an introduction to GoPiGo3 and the sensors and actuators with which it is equipped. You'll then work with GoPiGo3's digital twin by creating a 3D model from scratch and running a simulation in ROS using Gazebo. Next, the book will show you how to use GoPiGo3 to build and run an autonomous mobile robot that is aware of its surroundings. Finally, you'll find out how a robot can learn tasks that have not been programmed in the code but are acquired by observing its environment. You'll even cover topics such as deep learning and reinforcement learning. By the end of this robot programming book, you'll be well-versed with the basics of building specific-purpose applications in robotics and developing highly intelligent autonomous robots from scratch. If you are an engineer looking to build AI-powered robots using the ROS framework, this book is for you. Robotics enthusiasts and hobbyists who want to develop their own ROS robotics projects will also find this book useful. Knowledge of Python and/or C++ programming and familiarity with single board computers such as Raspberry Pi is necessary to get the most out of this book.

ebook

Published February 26, 2020

Reviews

[Tovli Toda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, by the time I got around to reading this book I was not interested in ROS (1) which the book uses, so I attempted to read the book while doing everything in ROS2.

I was not interested in the simulation chapters, only the chapters that addressed putting ROS on the GoPiGo3 robot, and thus the book quickly became no longer useful.

The author ghosted the GoPiGo3 user community eventually, so where we thought we might have an expert to learn from - it just wasn't true.

I was hopeful for a re-write/update in ROS2 but it has not happened.

The book rushed through the basics of getting the GoPiGo3 robot running ROS and then launched into advanced topics far beyond the actual GoPiGo3 robot connection, leaving lots of loose ends - for example fusion of IMU and encoders to give accurate heading data is a basic need for every real robot in the real world. This is way more important than talking about machine learning.

When I first saw the book, I thought "oh good, someone to help me make my GoPiGo3 robot smart." When I finished the first half of the book, I thought "someone wanted to make some money publishing a book". Sorry if that is harsh, but that was how I felt. Used and abandoned.