ROBOT Gym

Training to become a robot master.

Notes and resources from an applied robotics workshop based on ROS

Table of Content

• Overview
• Prerequisites
• Development Tools
• Cheat Sheet
  • Environment
  • Terminator
  • ROS
• Demos
• Resources
• Contact

Overview

This is an introductory workshop on robotics and working with ROS Kinetic. We will cover topics regarding planning, teleoperation, communication, and hardware. For the most part, the tutorials will be based off the existing ROS Tutorial which can be found here.

Prerequisites

This workshop assumes the following:

• Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS has been installed
• Atleast 10GB of disk space is available
• Attendees have some working knowledge of C++, Java or Python 2.7
• Attendees are interested in learning about ROS and robotics

Tools

Terminator
Allows users to have multiple terminals in one window.

# To install terminator, execute the following command in your terminal
# 
$ sudo apt install terminator

Cheat Sheet

Get machine's IP address

$ ifconfig

# ...
# wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 10:02:b5:3f:64:e3  
#           inet addr:10.14.90.5  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
#           inet6 addr: fe80::8de2:cbad:43c4:fa14/64 Scope:Link
#           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
#           RX packets:11239 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
#           TX packets:8317 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
#           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
#           RX bytes:13144484 (13.1 MB)  TX bytes:1449665 (1.4 MB)
#
# Your machine's IP address is noted after 'inet addr'
# In this case the machine's IP address is: 10.14.90.5

Set ROS variables in .bashrc file

$ sudo gedit ~/.bashrc

export ROS_IP=10.14.90.5 # YOUR MACHINE'S IP ADDRESS
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://10.14.90.5:11311 # ROS MASTER IP ADDRESS, Wait for instructions

Check variables

# Check hostname
$ hostname

# Check ROS Hostname
$ echo $ROS_HOSTNAME

# Check ROS IP
$ echo $ROS_IP

# Check ROS_MASTER_URI
$ echo $ROS_MASTER_URI

NOTE: Make sure these variables match what is in your .bashrc file.

Terminator

Splitting Windows

Command	Action
Ctrl+Shift+E	vertical split
Ctrl+Shift+O	horizontal split
Alt+ArrowKeys	Navigate terminals
Ctrl+Shift+P	focus be active on the previous view
Ctrl+Shift+N	focus be active on the next view
Ctrl+Shift+W	close the view where the focus is on
Ctrl+Shift+Q	exit terminator
Ctrl+Shift+X	focus active window and enlarge it

Groups

Command	Action
Ctrl+G	Group All
Ctrl+Shift+G	Ungroup All
Ctrl+T	Group Tab
Ctrl+Shift+T	Ungroup Tab

Launcher parameters

• -m – maximize
• -b – borderless
• -T – set title

ROS

# roscore
# roscore must be running at all times for ROS node to communicate
# roscore launches the following nodes: master, parameter server, rosout
# 
$ roscore

# rosrun
# rosrun allows you to run any ROS packages without having to be in the package's working directory
# 
$ rosrun

# rostopic
# rostopic display debug information about ROS topics from publishers and subscribers
# 
$ rostopic

Demos

MOVR

RoboWaiter

Resources

• About ROS
• TurtleBot 2
• Ubuntu install of ROS Kinectic
• Irvin's Awesome Developer Resources
• Programming Robots with ROS: A Practical Introduction to the Robot Operating System
• ROS Cheat Sheet
• Terminator Cheat Sheet

Contact

Irvin Steve Cardenas
LinkedIn: /in/irvinscardenas
Twitter: @followIrvin
Email: irvin@irvincardenas.com
Web: www.irvincardenas.com