You're reading from ROS 2 from Scratch Get started with ROS 2 and create robotics applications with Python and C++

Product type Paperback

Published in Nov 2024

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781835881408

Length 380 pages

Edition 1st Edition

Concepts

Robotics

Author (1):

Edouard Renard

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Table of Contents (20) Chapters

Preface

1. Part 1:Getting Started with ROS 2

2. Chapter 1: Introduction to ROS 2 – What Is ROS 2? FREE CHAPTER

3. Chapter 2: Installing and Setting Up ROS 2

4. Chapter 3: Uncovering ROS 2 Core Concepts

5. Part 2: Developing with ROS 2 – Python and C++

6. Chapter 4: Writing and Building a ROS 2 Node

7. Chapter 5: Topics – Sending and Receiving Messages between Nodes

8. Chapter 6: Services – Client/Server Interaction between Nodes

9. Chapter 7: Actions – When Services Are Not Enough

10. Chapter 8: Parameters – Making Nodes More Dynamic

11. Chapter 9: Launch Files – Starting All Your Nodes at Once

12. Part 3: Creating and Simulating a Custom Robot with ROS 2

13. Chapter 10: Discovering TFs with RViz

14. Chapter 11: Creating a URDF for a Robot

15. Chapter 12: Publishing TFs and Packaging the URDF

16. Chapter 13: Simulating a Robot in Gazebo

17. Chapter 14: Going Further – What To Do Next

18. Index

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Improving the URDF with Xacro

The more complex your robot, the bigger the URDF. As you add more links and joints, you will end up having problems scaling your robot model. Also, what we have written so far is not so dynamic: all the values are hardcoded.

Xacro is an additional ROS feature you can use to solve all those issues. We will now see how to make a URDF file compatible with Xacro, how to create variables and functions, and how to split your URDF into several files.

With Xacro, your URDF files will become more dynamic and scalable. All serious ROS 2 projects use Xacro, so it’s important to learn how to work with it.

Let’s get started with the setup.

Making a URDF file compatible with Xacro

We will start by making sure our URDF file can use Xacro features. Before doing anything, let’s make sure that Xacro is installed (it should already be there with all the previous packages we installed):