I just downloaded ROS and intend to begin learning it throughly. Unfortunately, I'm learning to use Linux for the first time as well. In the past I always used Matlab for everything because I was in school and licenses weren't an issue for me. Now that I'm in "the real world" and see how much Matlab costs, I'm ready to move on. Not to mention ROS seems to have alot of great people working on it.
I'm wondering if anyone here has used it much, if so what are you doing with it? I'll be doing some SLAM type projects with some expensive sensors, but was wondering if anyone uses it with cheaper hobby robots.
I have not used it but it I have not used it but it was one of two frameworks I was very interested in (Orca was the other). I chose to start an open source Java framework (MyRobotLab). Currently, it integrates with Arduino and we have plans to inegrate with PICAXE and Propeller. There is a huge amount of opensource Java
Projects which would be extremely useful to robots e.g. Javacv/OpenCV, Sphinx 4, FreeTTS are a few projects already integrated.
It is a pretty cool platform and the future of robotics might be ROS. Its a pity there are no video tutorials or books about ROS. Only official tutorials that you have dig into.
ROS takes data from the range finder and does the mapping, obstacle avoidance, pathing and visualisation all by itself! Now imagine programming all that by your own. Simply amazing software this ROS. I mean operating system =)
What we need are “getting started” tutorials on ROS. And basically more newby friendly tutorials, like for the arduino.
Btw another good read that sums up ROS pretty good:
There are a number of us using ROS on lower cost platforms over on the Trossen Robotics Forums – we even have our own sub-forum for ROS (http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=137). Patrick (Pi Robot) who made those presentations is among our crowd – and that demo is based on my ArbotiX controller work.
The introductory tutorials (http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Tutorials) really are quite good, although there is a learning curve. That learning curve does pay off though, as hundreds of developers are releasing free and open source software that you can quickly start to use once you’re up to speed on ROS.
I have a ER1 from evolution robotics and an old lego mindstorms and a basic stamp 2 Board of education kit(without the boebot).
I have just downloaded Ubuntu and ROS on my old aspire 1200 laptop and want to use ROS to operate my ER1 and whatever else I make in the future. I am a hobbyist so I only get to work or play with this stuff over vacations and some weekends.
I pop in here from time to time to see whatsup too
