A Gentle Introduction to ROS

This excellent little book is well worth a read, even for those who've been using ROS for some years. If you just do the ROS tutorials, you'll end up knowing 75% of what this book teaches, but you'll be missing the 25% that will really help you. And the online version is even free, at http://www.cse.sc.edu/~jokane. All you're paying for is the trees needed to give you something you can read anywhere or pull off your bookshelf.The book fills in around the ROS tutorials by drawing from wiki pages on underlying commands like rossrv, the roslaunch xml page, and many others like them, and placing that knowledge in a cohesive framework that helps you understand why you should do things certain ways (e.g. why use relative or private names in launch file parameters, and why use groups), and highlights details easily glossed over in ROS documentation (e.g. rate-limited logging - ROS_INFO_STREAM_THROTTLE()). It covers all the core areas of ROS, but does not go into important libraries like tf. For that, try the more advanced ROS By Example ebook from Lulu.com, which picks up where the ROS tutorials leave off.Kudos to Jason O'Kane for using his pedagogical skills to fulfill the mission of the "x for Dummies" series: "An introduction for beginners and a reference for the rest of us".

Excellent Introduction book for ROS newbies. When I started to read ROS tutorials, they are very messy to me, and I always wonder how they work together, and which ones should I just skip at the beginner level.I bought this book and after reading in a week, I believe every basic concepts are now very clear, connected to form a big picture. Now, when I skim all the tutorials on the Website again, they are all familiar to me, very easy to understand (let then an hour to review all the concepts in ROS). Confident to move on. Thanks so much for writing a great BOOK FOR DUMMY.

The title says it all. This book will take you from 0 to about a third of the way up the learning curve in easy to understand steps. After reading this book, you will have enough knowledge to understand the basics of ROS, and to start experimenting on creating your own node. You will also know the next steps required for additional proficiency in ROS.In the past as a hobbyist robotictist, I have looked at ROS several times but was never able to get any traction. I think this book, may be the key for finally exploring ROS.

Very well explained and concise book. Unfortunately the book discusses ros development only through C++, i.e. python development is not mentioned, let alone discussed. You would think python is a more gentle introduction than C++. Udacity classes use python i.e. rospy.

Wonderful introductory text! The author provides enough to get started but not so much to bog the reader down. When complete, the user will have a good understanding of what and why ROS is what it is as well as enough know-how to start programming useful applications.I have been following ROS since its inception and this is, in my opinion, the hands down best intro to the topic I have come across.

ROS is pretty much ~the~ development stack for robotics these days. Unfortunately, like many open-source projects, the documentation is a mess. Each new release seems to be largely incompatible with previous releases and modules, written as volunteer efforts, are often never moved forward and very infrequently well documented.This book does a solid job of getting you up and running on the very steep learning curve that is ROS. After reading it, you'll be in much better shape to wade through the slosh-pit of the various ROS modules and distros.While it may seem like a 'slim' book on a big topic, I found it far better than trying to wade through the disjointed and often inaccurate online 'tutorials'. He doesn't waste time with pointless asides and stays focused on moving the reader through the essentials. In other words, the short length is a blessing, not a curse !!

The book has the necessary details. It is written in an easy to read format. A very delightful book book.

Most of the information in this book is similar to that which can be found online. However, it goes above and beyond the online resources and provides a great resource for using ROS.I will definitely be referring back to this book numerous times as I continue to write ROS software.

Mai titolo fu più appropriato per un libro: "A gentle introduction to ROS" spiega tutti i rudimenti necessari per iniziare ad usare questo sistema senza scendere mai troppo nel dettaglio specifico ma concentrandosi sul concept generico. Un ponte perfetto verso i numerosi tutorial sul web e una comoda guida da consultare velocemente al bisogno.