A Gentle Introduction to Using ROS on Your Robots
Sidestep the nasty learning curve and take your bots to the next level
There comes a time in every robot builder’s life when they start thinking about building something... epic. Maybe you’ve built a couple of simple Arduino bots that run around a room and avoid obstacles, or followed a track on the floor. They are terrific fun, and you’ve learned a lot, but you’d like to do something more complex, with some image processing, or network control, or one of those inexpensive LIDAR sensors you’ve seen. Do you have to write all that stuff from the ground up? Where do you even start?
I’d recommend you take the time to learn the basics of ROS.
If, like me, you just start with the ROS tutorials, with no context, you’ll likely struggle for a while to understand what it does, why it’s useful, and how you might integrate it into your robot. This article aims to provide that context, to show you how it all fits together, and how you might use it.
What is ROS, anyway?
ROS is an operating system for your robot. It runs on top of a standard Linux installation on a variety of different types of computer, such as a Raspberry Pi or other single board computer, a laptop, or desktop. Here’s what it does.
