Introducing ROS

In this chapter, we introduce the Robot Operating System (ROS), a powerful tool for developing robotics applications. We will explore the significance of ROS in the field of robotics and detail the process of setting up ROS on a Raspberry Pi 4. This involves replacing the standard Raspberry Pi OS with Ubuntu, due to Ubuntu’s compatibility and optimization for specific versions of ROS.

We will start our hands-on exercises setting up and running TurtleSim, a user-friendly ROS simulator. We will do this to gain knowledge of basic ROS concepts and operations. Starting with simple keyboard controls, we will learn how to command and maneuver a virtual robot within the simulator environment. We will follow this up by progressing to controlling the TurtleSim simulator with Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) messages as we start to bridge the gap between simulation and real-world application.

Building on the skills developed through working with TurtleSim...