To get the most out of this book

Readers can work with almost all of the examples in the book using only a standard computer running Ubuntu 16.04/18.04, without any special hardware requirements. However, additional hardware components will be required while working with external sensors, actuators, and I/O boards.

Alternatively, readers can work with Ubuntu 16.04/18.04 installed on a virtual machine, such as Virtualbox or VMware hosted on a Windows system, although more computational power is required.

The robotic applications discussed in this book require commercial hardware such as I/O boards (Arduino, Odroid, and Raspberry Pi), perspective sensors (Kinect and camera), and actuator (Servomotor and Joystick).

Most importantly, it is recommended that reader should learn by experimenting with the source code provided in the book so that they become familiar with the technical concepts.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packtpub.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

• WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
• Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
• 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Robot-Operating-System-Cookbook. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/RobotOperatingSystemCookbook_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."

A block of code is set as follows:

<launch> 
 <group ns="/"> 
  <param name="rosversion" command="rosversion roslaunch" /> 
  <param name="rosdistro" command="rosversion -d" /> 
  <node pkg="rosout" type="rosout" name="rosout" respawn="true"/> 
 </group> 
</launch>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ rostopic list 
$ cd 

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "On the main toolbar, select File | Open Workspace, and choose the directory representing the ROS workspace."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.