Understanding the Arduino-ROS interface

Let's see what Arduino is first. Arduino is one of the most popular open source development boards on the market. The ease of programming and the cost-effectiveness of the hardware have made Arduino a big success. Most of the Arduino boards are powered by Atmel microcontrollers, which are available from 8 bit to 32 bit, with clock speeds from 8 MHz to 84 MHz. Arduino can be used for the quick prototyping of robots. The main applications of Arduino in robotics are interfacing sensors and actuators, used for communicating with PCs to receive high-level commands and to send sensor values to PCs using the UART protocol.

There are different varieties of Arduino available on the market. Selecting one board for our purpose will be dependent on the nature of our robotic application. Let's see some boards that we can use for beginner, intermediate, and high-end users:

Figure 9.1 – Different versions of the Arduino...