Basic Operations and Learning Resources
Part 1 Learning Resources
1. Official resources
ROS wiki have the most comprehensive learning materials, including operations and package introduction.
ROS answers is the official Q&A community.
VPN is unnecessary here. However, a VPN can make your visit faster and smoother, so better get one.
2. Other convenient resources
The best solution when you can’t find answer on ROS wiki is GOOGLING
When you google, you may find many useful websites and blogs written by fully experienced developers, such as CSDN, Stackoverflow and so on.
VPN is required when googling.
With those resources, your learning process may become easier.
Part 2 Basic Operations
1. Configure your environment
To start ROS automatically whenever you open a new terminal, run:
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echo "source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc # Write "source" into bash config
source ~/.bashrc # Activate new bash config
Now ROS environment can be acitivated once you open a new terminal.
2. Manage ROS filesystem
Here are some useful commands to navigate ROS filesystem:
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roscd [package][/subdir] # Automatically go to /opt/ros/noetic
rospack find [package] # Show the path of certain package
rosls [package]
These commands will save you a lot of time of inputting a long file path.
3. Start your work
Step 1: Create a new workspace
Each time you start your work, you need a workspace to use catkin tools.
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mkdir -p WORKSPACE_NAME/src # Replace WORKSPACE_NAME with custom name of your new workspace
cd WORKSPACE_NAME/src # Go to /src in your workspace
Step 2 Create a package
ROS use packages to accomplish all the functions. To create your own ROS package, run:
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catkin_create_pkg PKG_NAME [dependency 1][dependency 2]...
# Replace PKG_NAME with custom package name
# If you develop ROS project with Cpp, dependency 'roscpp' is required at least
# Else if you develop with Python, dependency 'rospy' is required at least
# You can also add other dependencies, it depends on which packages you need to include
Actually, this command mainly helps you to generate the files entailed to build your project. Therefore, if you are not sure what dependency you may need in your work, you can add
roscpp/rospyonly, and add the other dependencies inCMakeLists.txtandpackage.xmllater.
Step 3 Build your package
Go to your package directory:
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cd PKG_NAME
If you run ls , you will see:
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CMakeLists.txt package.xml src include
Now you can start your work like a normal Cpp or Python project. Take Cpp as example, put header files in /include, and put source files in /src,.
Remember to modify CMakeLists.txt and package.xml, how to do this will be posted in Basic Usage of ROS (3)
After you finish your work, build the package:
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cd $PATH_OF_WORKSPACE
catkin_make
cd src
If you run ls , you will see the following:
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PKG_NAME CMakeLists.txt
This means building and compilation are all successful.
Step 4 Test your package
Use rosrun to run your project:
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rosrun [package] [exec file]
There is something different from ROS 2. In ROS 1, what we need to run is executable file, instead of .cpp or .py file !
HOORAY !!!!!!!! Now you can create your own work now !