Preface
In 2016, while cofounding a robotics start-up, I was searching for tools and technologies to build the software for a new six-axis robotic arm, and I stumbled upon ROS. Somehow, I got the intuition that ROS seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. Yet, I couldn’t really comprehend what it was, or what it was doing.
It took me a long time to understand ROS, and as I was learning about it, I realized how painful the process was. There was—and still is—a lack of clear teaching materials and online resources, especially for beginners. As I continued to use ROS over the years, I also realized it was not just me—many other developers were still lost. This led me to create online courses to teach ROS and other related topics, with the goal of making ROS more accessible to everyone.
A few years forward, this book is a continuation of this process. With more experience using and teaching ROS (or ROS 2—the difference will be explained later), I wrote the book I wish I had when I first got started. When working on the book, I tried as much as possible to place myself in a beginner’s shoes and to avoid two common obstacles to learning.
First, in tech circles, you can sometimes see toxic behavior shown by some experts who look down on you, and say stuff like “How can you not already know how to do that—it’s so basic?”, or explain things to you very fast while using jargon, and then make you feel stupid when you don’t understand. This behavior is not helpful, and won’t motivate you to learn.
Second, I don’t know why, but so many people like to overcomplicate things, and this is not just related to ROS or even technology. Most of the time, once concepts are clearly understood, they can be explained in very simple steps. There’s no need to make them sound complicated if it’s not needed, and there’s no need to spend one hour explaining something if it can be done in five minutes. That creates noise and confusion.
In this book, I want to do the opposite: teach without judgment over a lack of skills, and give priority to clear and simple explanations. With this, I hope you can learn efficiently, and finish this book being less confused than you are now, and more motivated to continue your journey with ROS 2 and robotics.
