In this final chapter of the book, we have presented some concepts and references to further extend the capabilities you can endow on your robot. These new concepts should increase your desire to learn more about ROS. The concepts and robot examples presented in this book were meant to provide a solid foundation of ROS.

With the integration and influence of ROS extending to an ever increasing number of robots, this book attempts to cover the essential aspects of robotics systems as they relate to ROS. In the first chapter, we started with ROS fundamentals and used the Turtlesim simulation to demonstrate the concepts of ROS packages, nodes, topics, messages, and services. We continued by exploring a number of example robots that encompass a wide range of purposes:

Along the way, ROS software was introduced that interfaces a variety of sensors, control devices, and controller boards. The basic structure of ROS simulation was learned through the use of URDF and Xacro to design robot models for simulation. These robot descriptions in URDF and Xacro provide the basis for the ROS tf transforms that map the 3D coordinate frames of the robot and its environment. Through the use of Gazebo and rviz, we interacted with the robots in simulation and saw data displayed from their sensors. Two other major ROS tools, rqt and MoveIt, were also described.

Now it is time to consider other aspects of ROS that will extend your learning to the more advanced features that ROS provides. There are a number of additional books and web resources available on ROS. ROS has an extensive community of users that develop, use, and support the open source software that we all access. We hope that you enjoy becoming a part of this community. We have enjoyed providing you with a glimpse into some of the many aspects and advantages of ROS.