Summary

In this chapter, we covered some advanced concepts—such as the pluginlib, nodelets, and Gazebo plugins—that can be used to add more functionalities to a complex ROS application. We discussed the basics of pluginlib and saw an example of using it. After covering pluginlib, we looked at ROS nodelets, which are widely used in high-performance applications. We also looked at an example using ROS nodelets. Finally, we came to the Gazebo plugins that are used to add functionalities to Gazebo simulators.

This chapter will have given you a clear idea of how to write plugins and nodelets in ROS. Nodelets will be very useful when working with computer vision and 3D point-cloud applications. The Gazebo plugins will give you a good understanding of how to create custom plugins for your robots.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the ROS Visualization (RViz) plugin and ROS controllers in more detail.

Here are some questions based on what we learned in this chapter...