ROS Tutorials

Non-Beginners: If you're already familiar enough with ROS fuerte or earlier versions and only want to explore the new build system in groovy and hydro called catkin, you can go through more in-depth catkin tutorial here. However, going over all basic Beginner Level tutorials is still recommended for all users to get exposed to new features.

If you are new to Linux: You may find it helpful to first do a quick tutorial on common command line tools for linux. A good one is here.

Core ROS Tutorials

Beginner Level

1. Installing and Configuring Your ROS Environment

   This tutorial walks you through installing ROS and setting up the ROS environment on your computer.

2. Navigating the ROS Filesystem

   This tutorial introduces ROS filesystem concepts, and covers using the roscd, rosls, and rospack commandline tools.

3. Creating a ROS Package

   This tutorial covers using roscreate-pkg or catkin to create a new package, and rospack to list package dependencies.

4. Building a ROS Package

   This tutorial covers the toolchain to build a package.

5. Understanding ROS Nodes

   This tutorial introduces ROS graph concepts and discusses the use of roscore, rosnode, and rosrun commandline tools.

6. Understanding ROS Topics

   This tutorial introduces ROS topics as well as using the rostopic and rqt_plot commandline tools.

7. Understanding ROS Services and Parameters

   This tutorial introduces ROS services, and parameters as well as using the rosservice and rosparam commandline tools.

8. Using rqt_console and roslaunch

   This tutorial introduces ROS using rqt_console and rqt_logger_level for debugging and roslaunch for starting many nodes at once. If you use ROS fuerte or ealier distros where rqt isn't fully available, please see this page with this page that uses old rx based tools.

9. Using rosed to edit files in ROS

   This tutorial shows how to use rosed to make editing easier.

10. Creating a ROS msg and srv

    This tutorial covers how to create and build msg and srv files as well as the rosmsg, rossrv and roscp commandline tools.

11. Writing a Simple Publisher and Subscriber (C++)

    This tutorial covers how to write a publisher and subscriber node in C++.

12. Writing a Simple Publisher and Subscriber (Python)

    This tutorial covers how to write a publisher and subscriber node in python.

13. Examining the Simple Publisher and Subscriber

    This tutorial examines running the simple publisher and subscriber.

14. Writing a Simple Service and Client (C++)

    This tutorial covers how to write a service and client node in C++.

15. Writing a Simple Service and Client (Python)

    This tutorial covers how to write a service and client node in python.

16. Examining the Simple Service and Client

    This tutorial examines running the simple service and client.

17. Recording and playing back data

    This tutorial will teach you how to record data from a running ROS system into a .bag file, and then to play back the data to produce similar behavior in a running system

18. Reading messages from a bag file

    Learn two ways to read messages from desired topics in a bag file, including using the ros_readbagfile script.

19. Getting started with roswtf

    Basic introduction to the roswtf tool.

20. Navigating the ROS wiki

    This tutorial discusses the layout of the ROS wiki (wiki.ros.org) and talks about how to find what you want to know.

21. Where Next?

    This tutorial discusses options for getting to know more about using ROS on real or simulated robots.

Now that you have completed the beginner level tutorials please answer this short questionnaire.

Intermediate Level

More client API tutorials can be found in the relevant package (roscpp, rospy, roslisp)

1. Creating a ROS package by hand.

   This tutorial explains how to manually create a ROS package.

2. Managing System dependencies

   This explains how to use rosdep to install system dependencies.

3. Roslaunch tips for large projects

   This tutorial describes some tips for writing roslaunch files for large projects. The focus is on how to structure launch files so they may be reused as much as possible in different situations. We'll use the 2dnav_pr2 package as a case study.

4. Running ROS across multiple machines

   This tutorial explains how to start a ROS system using two machines. It explains the use of ROS_MASTER_URI to configure multiple machines to use a single master.

5. Defining Custom Messages

   This tutorial will show you how to define your own custom message data types using the ROS Message Description Language.

6. Using a C++ class in Python

   This tutorial illustrates a way to use a C++ class with ROS messages in Python.

7. Packaging your ROS project as a snap

   This tutorial covers how to package and deploy your ROS project as a snap.

8. How to Write a Tutorial

   This tutorial covers useful template and macros for writing tutorials, along with example tutorials that are available for guidance on ros.org

ROS Standards

• ROS Developers Guide Guidelines for coding style, package layout and much more

• Standard Units of Measure and Coordinate Conventions

External ROS Resources

External Tutorials

• ROS Tutorial Video Demos at ANU

• NooTriX Step-by-Step ROS Tutorials

• Jonathan Bohren's ROS Tutorials

• Clearpath Robotics' knowledge base

External Seminar/Lecture

• Free introductory seminar for enterprises by TORK in Tokyo

Using ROS on your custom Robot

• Create your own URDF file Creating a custom Universal Robot Description Format file

• ros_control Use ROS's standard controller framework for interfacing with hardware.

• Using a URDF in Gazebo Add the necessary tags to get your robot in the Gazebo robotic simulator

• Setting up MoveIt! Creating the configuration package to use the MoveIt! Motion Planning Framework

Tutorials for Other ROS Libraries

• Robot Model

• Visualization

• actionlib

• pluginlib

• nodelets

• navigation

Tutorials for Libraries with ROS Interfaces

• Stage

• TF

• PCL with ROS