How to start with self-driving cars using ROS ?

Why ROS is interesting for autonomous cars ?

Robot Operating System (ROS) is a mature and flexible framework for robotics programming. ROS provides the required tools to easily access sensors data, process that data, and generate an appropriate response for the motors and other actuators of the robot. The whole ROS system has been designed to be fully distributed in terms of computation, so different computers can take part in the control processes, and act together as a single entity (the robot).

Due to these characteristics, ROS is a perfect tool for self-driving cars. After all, an autonomous vehicle can be considered as just another type of robot, so the same types of programs can be used to control them. ROS is interesting because:

1. There is a lot of code for autonomous cars already created. Autonomous cars require the creation of algorithms that are able to build a map, localize the robot using lidars or GPS, plan paths along maps, avoid obstacles, process pointclouds or cameras data to extract information, etc… Many algorithms designed for the navigation of wheeled robots are almost directly applicable to autonomous cars. Since those algorithms are already available in ROS, self-driving cars can just make use of them off-the-shelf.

2. Visualization tools are already available. ROS has created a suite of graphical tools that allow the easy recording and visualization of data captured by the sensors, and representation of the status of the vehicle in a comprehensive manner. Also, it provides a simple way to create additional visualizations required for particular needs. This is tremendously useful when developing the control software and trying to debug the code.

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Submitted September 12, 2018 at 01:00PM by yessersd123 https://ift.tt/2MppFhQ via TikTokTikk