What is best resource, tutorials to learn ROS using rospy?

Question

I have been learning ROS for two weeks now from online tutorials at Ros.org.

I have to build a mobile robot for my company. I will use ROS in my project. I will program in Python using rospy library. I want to know if there is any resource or any book where we can get more in depth guidance about developing a mobile robot using rospy. I mean, I would like to know if there is any resource which provides a step by step guidance in developing a mobile robot using ROS. In this way, It would be easy to get an idea of how to use ROS and rospy library to develop a robot from scratch.

It would be a great help if anybody of you could share your experiences on how you guys learnt ROS and which resources you made use of? Are there any best methods to learn ROS quickly? How much time it could take to start developing applications using ROS and rospy?

Thanks a lot

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Originally posted by ish45 on ROS Answers with karma: 151 on 2014-09-02

Post score: 0

Answer 1

The big problem is that the tutorials tells you how to do something but not why you (or the author) did it in that way. The best approach (to me) is to read at first the tutorials online and change a littel bit things to see what happen and to take confidence with the ROS environment. Later I can strongly suggest you to buy ROS by Example by Patrick Goebels which covers all the topics writing in Python and never in C++. Pay attention to buy the right version of the book. Since there are many version for every version of ROS (Groovy, Hydro, Fuerte...) you might want to buy the right one (for Indigo is Hydro ok, I use it now).

If you want to check at some code there are lot of robots prpogrammed with python (Arbotix for example)

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Originally posted by Andromeda with karma: 893 on 2014-09-02

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by ish45 on 2014-09-02:
Very good answer. Thanks. I am going to buy that one.

Comment by Andromeda on 2014-09-02:
you will be very happy, I promised. But don t forget to do the tutorials at first. Otherwise will be the book too much difficult to understand

Answer 2

I found the official ROS online tutorials to be enough to get me started, but I did learn a lot more in depth stuff from reading ROS by Example. When I only use the online tutorials, I only learn things I know I need to learn because I'm trying to figure out a problem. But with the books, I learn things that I didn't know were available :)

It looks like the author has made a second edition that covers more advanced topics such as "creating URDF models" which is what your asking when you say developing a simulated robot in ROS, you might want to check that out as well.

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Originally posted by Airuno2L with karma: 3460 on 2014-09-02

This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by ish45 on 2014-09-02:
Thanks. I am developing a real mobile robot not a simulated robot. Sorry it was my mistake while writing. ROS by Example has been written using roscpp. I was looking for something with rospy. If there are some resources which help me to get started programming in rospy would be a great help.

Comment by Airuno2L on 2014-09-02:
Actually ROS by Example uses only Python. Its mentioned in that link "Code samples are written in Python. "

Comment by ish45 on 2014-09-02:
Yes. I will buy that one. Thanks for pointing it out.

Comment by Airuno2L on 2014-09-02:
Glad to help. If that answers your question please hit the check mark to mark this as answered :)