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Hi Paul,<br>
<br>
Many thanks for the shout out! I have been pleasantly surprised by
the interest in my <a href="http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pirobot">two
ROS books</a> and I did aim to strike a middle ground between the
Wiki tutorials and a formal text book. I admire Anis for
considering the challenge of creating a more structured handbook as
I can only imagine the kind of effort that will take.<br>
<br>
One cautionary note I might pass on is that the changes from one ROS
version to the next are not always trivial which is why I make an
effort to create a new revision for each release. (I began with ROS
Electric for Volume 1 and now have revisions for Fuerte, Groovy, and
Hydro with Indigo coming hopefully within a couple of months.)
Getting updates out relatively quickly and at lesser cost to
educators or the end user is easier with an eBook format than hard
cover but I'm guessing Springer will be able to offer both.<br>
<br>
In any event, I am glad Anis is looking into this project as there
are still so many aspects of ROS (like UAVs) that need good
structured documentation with working examples. The original
tutorials on the ROS Wiki were invaluable to my own introduction to
ROS and continue to be an excellent starting point. But the more we
can fill in the gaps between those tutorials and real-world ROS
examples the better!<br>
<br>
--patrick<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/26/2014 11:30 AM, Paul Bouchier
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:544D3DDC.6050700@classicnet.net" type="cite">
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All,<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Regards<br>
<br>
Paul Bouchier<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/22/2014 12:29 PM, Mike Purvis
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CACsJT9OXrAoyNj-eGXrJwTvUQLXt8xc_rsjjKL9m-4MVipQdiQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Anis,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>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?</li>
<li>What's the deal with robot_state_publisher, and what's
the relationship between the joint_states topic and my
TF tree?</li>
<li>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?</li>
<li>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?</li>
<li>How does my robot know where it is? What is
localization, and what topics are consumed and produced
by it?</li>
<li>For a "typical" encoders + imu + LIDAR configuration,
what topics should I expect to see, where, and on what
frequencies?</li>
<li>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?</li>
<li>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?</li>
</ul>
<div>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.</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mike</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 22 October 2014 05:31, Anis Koubaa
(COINS) <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:akoubaa@coins-lab.org" target="_blank">akoubaa@coins-lab.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Hello
ROS users community,</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">I
am coordinating with Springer publisher to edit a
handbook on Robot Operating System. </div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">There
are only a few books on ROS <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wiki.ros.org/Books" target="_blank">http://wiki.ros.org/Books</a> 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. </div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">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.</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">To
express your interest to the handbook and your
intention of a chapter proposal, I would like to
invite you fill in the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JD78gka1rtotjGhBre-UJcm7QogQWUeURjvx4X028vw/viewform"
target="_blank">following form</a>. 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. </div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Thank
you and look forward to receive your feedback</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Anis</div>
<div style="font-size:14px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><br>
</div>
<div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><font color="#000000"><font
face="Courier"><b>-------------------------------------------------------------</b></font></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000" face="Courier"><b
style="font-size:18px">Anis Koubaa</b></font></div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><font face="Courier"><font
color="#000000">Associate Professor, </font>Prince
Sultan University, Saudi Arabia</font></div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><font face="Courier">Research
Associate, CISTER Research Unit, Portugal </font></div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Courier"><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://w"
target="_blank">http://w</a></span><span
style="font-family:Courier"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://ww.dei.isep.ipp.pt/%7Eakoubaa/"
target="_blank">ww.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~akoubaa/</a></span></div>
<div style="font-size:14px"><span
style="font-family:Courier"><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.iroboapp.org" target="_blank">http://www.iroboapp.org</a></span></div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
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