ROS stands for Robot Operating System. ROS is used in industry because it has a number of advantages:
- It's modular. A robot's different sensing, control and actuation systems can be developed separately, managing complexity.
- Modularity means robot parts can be written in different languages like python and C working together, so you can have the advantages of each.
- There are plenty of existing ROS modules out there, which can be reused.
To comfortably understand this tutorial, you need to know your way around a command line. At the very least, you should know how to use the cd command.
Optional extras that will help you speed through / fix problems are:
- A working knowledge of
dockerif you are using docker, or your shell if you are using linux - Good python skills.
- A solid internet connection to download stuff over.
If you are running Linux, you can still use our docker setup; or you can install ros using instructions available on google.
ROS has a few more tricks up its sleeve, including services, image handling, a whole stack of libraries, rosparam, and even operating across physical machines. These can be very powerful features, and the first step to discover them is to check out the real ROS tutorials at the official website: https://wiki.ros.org. Happy coding!