What I found to be pretty nice for playing around with basic gmapping
based SLAM is the erratic_robot stack:
http://www.ros.org/wiki/erratic_robot

This way you get a comparably simple (to PR2, that is) laser equipped
mobile platform and can drive it around in Gazebo using rviz.
The launch file for doing that is
erratic_navigation_apps/gazebo_demo/demo_2dnav_slam.launch.
If you look into that launch file and the ones referenced inside, you
can get a pretty good overview of what is needed for navigation of a
mobile robot with existing ROS tools.

regards,
Stefan

2011/2/1 Patrick Bouffard <bouffard@eecs.berkeley.edu>:
> Hi Jason,
>
> Sounds like a fun assignment. You definitely don't need to be a CS
> major to use ROS, you can pick up the coding required by experience.
>
> Start here: http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/StartGuide. The tutorials are
> very good and do not require any robot hardware to work through.
>
> Good Luck,
> Pat
>
> On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 8:59 AM,  <jabyers@clemson.edu> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> My name is Jason Byers and I am an Electrical Engineering student at
>> Clemson University. I am doing an undergraduate assignment in which my
>> professor wants me to download ROS and figure out how to use it and it's
>> SLAM code to build a map of a building and run one of the lab robots
>> through this building. However, being an electrical engineering student
>> versus a computer engineering student, I am not very good at coding. I was
>> wondering if someone could point me towards a tutorial or give me advice
>> as to how to at least start this task? I have downloaded ROS, but am not
>> really sure as to how I am supposed to use it or even get to it.
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Jason Byers
>>
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>>
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