[ROS Q&A] 104 – How to add a rotating join to Kinect in Turtlebot

We solve today a question from ROS answers that asks about how to add a rotating joint to the Turtlebot Kinect sensor: https://answers.ros.org/question/280715/include-a-rotation-axis-to-turtlebot/

Q: How to Include a rotation Axis to Turtlebot Kinect?

A: Basically, what you need is to change the type of joint that ties the Kinect to the Turtlebot structure from fixed to continuous . Then you need to add the controller for the joint. The video shows how to do it

// RELATED LINKS
* A simple example of how to create a movable joint in Gazebo: https://youtu.be/3qCh-p-hzCM

* The Turtlebot simulation used on the video (for Indigo-Gazebo 7): https://bitbucket.org/theconstructcore/turtlebot

[RDS] 004 – ROS Development Studio #Howto use git in RDS

In this video we show how to use git in RDS.

We do that by showing how to use git to clone a Gazebo Simulation of the Parrot Ardrone on the ~/simulation_ws (Simulation Workspace) and also we use git to clone a training package to the ~/catkin_ws (Catkin Workspace). This last package is used to train the robot.

Important thins about the video:

1. We use RDS (ROS Development Studio) available at: http://rds.theconstructsim.com/
2. The drone_training package used is available at: https://bitbucket.org/theconstructcore/drone_training.git
3. The Parrot Ardrone simulation is available at: https://bitbucket.org/theconstructcore/parrot_ardrone
4. If you want more details about the drone_training package you can go to https://www.theconstruct.ai/using-openai-ros/
5. The simulation was cloned to ~/simulation_ws/src
6. The training package was cloned to ~/catkin_ws/src
7. To start the training we used: roslaunch drone_training main.launch

If you prefer to use your own computer, you just have to install:

1. ROS (http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Installation)
2. OpenAI (https://gym.openai.com/docs/)
3. Have a Gazebo simulation (https://bitbucket.org/account/user/theconstructcore/projects/PS)

[RDS] 003 – ROS Development Studio Howto #3 move a robot with a python script

In this video, the third of a series, we are going to show how to move a robot with a python script by using the ROS Development Studio environment (http://rds.theconstructsim.com)

This video shows:
1- How to create a new ROS project and how to open it for development
2- How to launch a simulation to test your program, with any of the robots already integrated in the system
3- How to move a robot by command line
4- How to create the python script that moves/rotates the robot.

You can access the ROS Development Studio here: http://rds.theconstructsim.com

The code used during the video was the following:

#! /usr/bin/env python

import rospy
from geometry_msgs.msg import Twist
from time import sleep

rospy.init_node(‘rotate’)

publisher = rospy.Publisher(‘/cmd_vel’, Twist, queue_size=1)

rotate_right = True

while not rospy.is_shutdown():
msg = Twist()
msg.angular.z = 0.1 if rotate_right else -0.1

publisher.publish(msg)
rospy.loginfo(‘Msg published.’)
rotate_right = not rotate_right
sleep(10)