Robot Operating System (ROS) for Absolute Beginners

Lentin Joseph is an author, entrepreneur, electronics engineer, robotics enthusiast, machine vision expert, embedded programmer, and the founder and CEO of Qbotics Labs from India. He completed his bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering at the Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), Kerala. After graduating, Lentin worked for three years at a start-up company focusing on robotics and image processing. During that time he learned to work with various robotics software platforms such as Robot Operating System (ROS), V-REP, and Actin (a robotic simulation tool) and image processing libraries such as OpenCV, OpenNI, and PCL. He also has experience with 3D robot design and embedded programming on Arduino and Tiva Launchpad.  He recently started a new company called Qbotics Labs, which mainly focuses on research into building some great products in domains such as robotics and machine vision.

Robot Operating System for Absolute Beginners

Chapter 1: Getting Started with Ubuntu/Linux for RoboticsThis chapter will give the basic foundation of Ubuntu Linux. Starting from the fundamentals, installation and useful commands which are using while building and programming a robot, we will also see useful software applications which can be used while making robots.
Chapter 2: Fundamentals of Python and C++ for Robotic ProgrammingProgramming robots can be done using any of the programming languages. Most popular programming languages are Python and C++. In this chapter, we will see fundamentals of Python which are mainly used for programming robots. This chapter will also cover C++ and the important topics needed to program a robot.
Chapter 3: Kick starting Robot Operating System
This chapter starts discussing Robot Operating System, Fundamentals, Installing, ROS tools and ROS commands it on Ubuntu.
Chapter 4: Programming with ROSThis chapter is fully focused on programming ROS using C++ and Python. We will see some example code in this chapter.
Chapter 5: Building and programming mobile robot using ROSThis is a hands-on project which is used to apply all concepts of ROS that we discussed in the above chapters. We will see some more concepts which will explain in the appropriate sections. The aim of the project is to perform a dead-reckoning using a cheap mobile robot. We can command robot position on Rviz and robot will move to that position.
Chapter 6. Robotics project using ROS