[ros-users] Interest and proposal intention survey for a ROS Handbook

Sun Oct 26 18:30:52 UTC 2014

All,

I want to give a shout out for the ROS By Example books by Patrick 
Goebel. They are listed on the books wiki page Anis pointed to. They 
explain many of the  areas Mike cites as needing comprehensive 
explanation, and also contain a lot of examples that help you follow 
along, and are re-released with updates for each new version of ROS. 
There's an active google group for asking questions about material in 
the book. The two books are a level above the tutorials because they tie 
many packages together into solutions. At $15 - $22 for the e-book, or 
$25 - $38 for paperback, they are excellent value. If you work with ROS 
and aren't one of the illuminati, you really should have them on your 
disk or bookshelf.

New books should take these books' contributions into account (IMHO) and 
offer value in new areas - there's still a lot of ground that should be 
covered.

This is a public-service announcement for those who haven't looked at 
the books that are already out there; I have no connection to the author.

Regards

Paul Bouchier

On 10/22/2014 12:29 PM, Mike Purvis wrote:
> Hi Anis,
>
> I'm not sure how to express this through your form, but something 
> that's badly needed from Clearpath's perspective is a modern take on 
> what the parts are which make up a typical ROS robot. This is beyond 
> the "basics" of building a workspace, creating publishers and 
> subscribers, launching things, etc, but it's not as high-level as 
> specific packages like navigation, moveit, etc.
>
> Obviously there's a lot of variability out there, but if someone were 
> to build a robot today, from scratch, to use ROS, they'd ask some 
> fundamental questions like:
>
>   * How do I build a URDF for my robot? How do I name the links and
>     joints? Should I have a base_footprint? Should I use xacro?
>   * What's the deal with robot_state_publisher, and what's the
>     relationship between the joint_states topic and my TF tree?
>   * Where do the odom and map frames come from? Should I always expect
>     them to be there, or do they come and go depending what's running?
>     How do I handle REP-105 if my robot has a GPS receiver? What about
>     if it has an integrated GPS-INS?
>   * Now that I have a URDF, how do I bring my robot up in Gazebo? How
>     do I give my simulated robot an IMU, LIDAR, and camera?
>   * How does my robot know where it is? What is localization, and what
>     topics are consumed and produced by it?
>   * For a "typical" encoders + imu + LIDAR configuration, what topics
>     should I expect to see, where, and on what frequencies?
>   * How do I set up my robot to use ros_control and the existing suite
>     of available controllers? Should I have a real-time control loop?
>     If so, how do I set that up in Ubuntu?
>   * How should I set up ROS to launch automatically when I turn on my
>     robot? How do I manage logs, node output, and bag files?
>
> There's been discussion in the past about specifying some standards 
> for this kind of thing, possibly in a REP, but a great first step 
> would be a book or other resource which presented this material in an 
> approachable, linear kind of way.
>
> Mike
>
> On 22 October 2014 05:31, Anis Koubaa (COINS) <akoubaa at coins-lab.org 
> <mailto:akoubaa at coins-lab.org>> wrote:
>
>     Hello ROS users community,
>
>     I am coordinating with Springer publisher to edit a handbook on
>     Robot Operating System.
>     There are only a few books on ROS http://wiki.ros.org/Books which
>     mainly represent a brief introduction to ROS and a few basic
>     applications. This does not translate the huge amount of work
>     being done in the community and I feel the need to have a complete
>     reference on the topic.
>
>     The prospective handbook will cover ROS from foundations and
>     basics to advanced research works from both academia and industry.
>     Tutorials and research papers will both be sought. The book should
>     cover several robotics areas including but not limited to robot
>     navigation, UAVs, arm manipulation, multi-robot communication
>     protocols, Web and mobile interfaces using ROS, integration of new
>     robotic platform to ROS, computer vision applications, development
>     of service robots using ROS, development of new libraries and
>     packages for ROS, etc. Every book chapter should be accompanied
>     with a working code to be put later in a common repository for the
>     readers.
>
>     To express your interest to the handbook and your intention of a
>     chapter proposal, I would like to invite you fill in the following
>     form
>     <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JD78gka1rtotjGhBre-UJcm7QogQWUeURjvx4X028vw/viewform>. The
>     proposed chapters are just  considered as an initial expression of
>     interest and will be included in the handbook proposal. It does
>     not mean any kind of commitment for the author at this stage. An
>     official call for chapters with instructions and deadline will be
>     announced soon.
>
>     Thank you and look forward to receive your feedback
>     Anis
>
>     *-------------------------------------------------------------*
>     *Anis Koubaa*
>     Associate Professor, Prince Sultan University, Saudi Arabia
>     Research Associate, CISTER Research Unit, Portugal
>     http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~akoubaa/
>     <http://ww.dei.isep.ipp.pt/%7Eakoubaa/>
>     http://www.iroboapp.org
>     -------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>
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