[introduction to ROS] - 01 introduction to ROS

ROS, The only choice for robot systems

ROS What is it?

As children of the new century , Probably since birth , We are accompanied by the rapid development of robots , When I was young, I also had the ability to create my own robot , Finish the task of saving the world , So what is the real robot like now , In our lives , We can see all kinds of robots everywhere , They tirelessly help human beings accomplish those repetitive, boring, dangerous and complex tasks .
They may be like this , Robot arm responsible for collaborative production ：

It could be like this , Used to handle logistics tasks AGV robot

Of course these are also , More humanoid like robots

• The definition of robot :
  Robots have many different definitions , Simple speak , It can be Help humans accomplish tasks that are relatively difficult or inefficient for humans , And don't feel tired .
• Types of robots ：
  Robots are not limited to humanoid robots as we know them , Mechanical arm 、 Unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) 、 Unmanned ship even Smart car , It's all robots . Today's mainstream robot types , There is a smart car , They can realize unmanned driving , Mainly responsible for some warehousing and logistics problems ; With mechanical arm , Mainly responsible for intelligent automatic production and assembly ; And some special robots , For example, welcome robot, etc .

• Robot development platform ：
  ROS（Robot Operating System）, Open source robot operating system , It is a robot software platform , It can provide heterogeneous computer clusters with operating system like functions .

Robot design and manufacturing control is a very comprehensive research direction , It involves machinery 、 Electronics 、 Software 、 The Internet 、AI And so on , For students of a certain major , We can only master a few of these skills , We need software to help us design and complete the robot , And for ROS Come on ：

• It supports countless circuit boards , No need for us to burn the design ;
• It comes with countless mechanical models , There is no need for us to carry out mechanical design ;
• It has powerful communication and AI function , There is no need for us to understand the fundamentals ;
• It has a powerful simulation system , There is no need for us to work behind closed doors 、 Consider many issues in the design .

ROS The power of

• Perfect tools ：
  ROS It has a large number of practical and convenient components , Here we give a simple example ：

RVIZ, It is often used for pilotless navigation , It has obvious advantages over other software in the field of navigation ;

Gazebo, Robot physical simulation software , Compared with matlab、admas And so on, we can more clearly and intuitively see the motion of the robot in the simulated world , The interface is more smooth and beautiful ; Bloggers will also launch a follow-up report on Gazebo Getting started with , Coming soon ;

QT hold-all , Convenient visual adjustment test interface , It can help us complete the development and compilation more quickly and accurately ;
In addition to these ,ROS It also has something to do with navigation 、SLAM And other excellent components , In the future study, we will gradually understand .

• Mature communities ：
  

For me ,ROS In addition to the mature architecture system , It can help us reduce the time outside of learning knowledge of other disciplines , What's more, it has a perfect development community , since ROS Since the system was released , As the mainstream robot development software in the world , It has gradually built a powerful function package 、 Powerful development tools and a strong developer community , Can let you encounter any problem , Find the appropriate solution .
Here are some basic ROS Resource Website ：

ROS： Provide libraries and tools , Help software developers create robot applications ;
ROS Wiki：ROS Software packages and tutorials ;
ROSCon：ROS Annual developer conference ;
Ancient Moon House ： Larger Chinese ROS The development community ;
ROS2 Docm：ROS2 file ;
ROS2 design：ROS2 Design documents ;

It is from ROS Feature packs in the distribution 、 Share open source code 、 as well as ROS Wiki、ROS Answers Together with various blogs, it forms a perfect ROS The ecological system , Can effectively help us complete the robot development research .

ROS Learning methods of

• ROS My study is very simple ：
  ROS Learning is not difficult , The main thing is to have a deep understanding of ROS The relationship between the nodes of , Sort out the connection between them , Familiar with various gadgets and community resources , After becoming proficient , It can greatly reduce our development time and cost .
• ROS My study is very difficult ：
  Again ROS My study is also very difficult , The difficulty lies in many ways , On the one hand Linux System , Different windows Graphical operation under , New to Linux It is difficult for us to adapt to learning at the beginning , On the one hand, it is programming knowledge and ROS Architecture requirements , Lead to ROS The learning curve is very steep , It's hard to get started .

Faced with such a problem , Of course we can't shrink back , I'm sure you're like me , Study ROS In fact, it is to learn about robots , We have always maintained such a passion and love for robots , and ROS It's our weapon , Here are some simple tutorials , I hope all of you can share with me .

Ancient Moon House ROS introduction 21 speak
Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming, by Lentin Joseph
ROS By Example (Volume 1 and Volume 2), by Patrick Goebel
Programming Robots with ROS: A Practical Introduction to the Robot Operating System, by Morgan Quigley, Brian Gerkey & William D. Smart
Learning ROS for Robotics Programming, by Aaron Martinez, Enrique Fernández
ROS Robot development practice , by Hu Chunxu
Self-Driving Cars with ROS and Autoware - hosted by Apex.AI

Study ROS We should learn from several angles , On the one hand, we need to deeply understand ROS Basic architecture , master ROS Knowledge of nodes 、 Communication mechanism and the use of command line and code ; On the one hand, we should master programming knowledge , Improve your understanding of Linux、C++、python Programming capabilities ; Finally, we should master the ability to find resources by ourselves 、 The ability to search for questions , Make good use of ROS A strong community , Help us complete the design and development of robots .

summary

This paper mainly introduces the robot development platform ROS System , From architecture 、 Application and learning methods are briefly described , Subsequent blogs will first introduce ROS Installation and basic use of , Coming soon .