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You're reading from Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming Design, build, and simulate complex robots using the Robot Operating System

Product type Paperback

Published in Feb 2018

Publisher Packt

ISBN-13 9781788478953

Length 580 pages

Edition 2nd Edition

Languages

C++

Tools

ROS

Concepts

Design

Authors (2):

Lentin Joseph

Jonathan Cacace

View More author details

Table of Contents (17) Chapters

Preface

1. Introduction to ROS FREE CHAPTER

2. Getting Started with ROS Programming

3. Working with 3D Robot Modeling in ROS

4. Simulating Robots Using ROS and Gazebo

5. Simulating Robots Using ROS and V-REP

6. Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack

7. Working with pluginlib, Nodelets, and Gazebo Plugins

8. Writing ROS Controllers and Visualization Plugins

9. Interfacing I/O Boards, Sensors, and Actuators to ROS

10. Programming Vision Sensors Using ROS, Open CV, and PCL

11. Building and Interfacing Differential Drive Mobile Robot Hardware in ROS

12. Exploring the Advanced Capabilities of ROS-MoveIt!

13. Using ROS in MATLAB and Simulink

14. ROS for Industrial Robots

15. Troubleshooting and Best Practices in ROS

16. Other Books You May Enjoy

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Understanding the ROS visualization tool (RViz) and its plugins

The RViz tool is an official 3D visualization tool of ROS. Almost all kinds of data from sensors can be viewed through this tool. RViz will be installed along with the ROS desktop full installation. Let's launch RViz and see the basic components present in RViz.

Start roscore:

$ roscore

Start rviz:

$ rviz

The important sections of the RViz GUI are marked, and the uses of each section are shown in the following screenshot:

Displays panel

The panel on the left side of the RViz is called the Displays panel. The Displays panel contains a list of the display plugins of RViz and its properties. The main use of display plugins is to visualize different types of ROS messages, mainly sensor data in the RViz 3D viewport. There are lots of display plugins already present in RViz for viewing images from the camera, and for viewing the 3D point cloud, LaserScan, robot model, TF, and so on. Plugins can be added by pressing the Add button on the...