To get the most out of this book

In order to run the examples in this book, you need a standard PC running Linux OS. Ubuntu 16.04 is the suggested Linux distribution, but Debian 8 is supported as well. The suggested PC configuration requires at least 4 GB of RAM and a modern processor (Intel i-family) to execute Gazebo simulations and image processing algorithms.

Readers can even work in a virtual environment setup installing Linux OS on a virtual machine, using Virtual box or VMware software hosted on a Windows system. The disadvantage of this choice is that more computational power is needed to work with the examples and the reader could face issues when interfacing ROS with real hardware.

The software needed to follow the book is ROS and Kinetic Kame. Additional software required is V-REP simulator, Git, Matlab, and Simulink.

Finally, some chapters help readers to interface ROS with commercial hardware such as I/O boards (Arduino, Odroid, and Raspberry Pi computers), vison sensors (Kinect/Asus Xition Pro), and actuators. These are special hardware components that must be bought to run some examples of the book but are not strictly required to learn ROS.

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/Mastering-ROS-for-Robotics-Programming-Second-Edition. 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/MasteringROSforRoboticsProgrammingSecondEdition_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.