Purpose
It’s important now to delve into much greater detail on what Topics are. They are the lifeblood of ROS applications. You will also try to do some more hands-on work with ROS.
Do This
- Read PRR Chapter 3, which you can find in the Brandeis Safari Library.
You will learn about how to publish a topic, how to subscriber to one, how to use the command line as well as your Python scripts to work with them. As mentioned above, Topics are the key to ROS. Try to really get your head around them!
- You will find the code for the examples all in the provided
samplesd package. We also provide additional chapter notes to add detail and make some corrections, see: 3: Topics and 3a: Custom Messages
Be able to answer
- There are two ways to
publish a topic. What are they?
- Explain the difference between a topic’s name (e.g.
/counter) and a topic’s message (e.g. Int32)
- Would you ever have to create your own (new) message?
- In what way is a robot
pose different from its position?