Using Ipython with ROS for rapid prototyping

ROS (Robot Operating System) is a very powerfull set of tools for creating robotic systems, however, many beginners feel intimidated by it. In my practice, I usually start using a new robot or a new ROS package using Jupyter notebooks and Ipython. On recent PyCon PL we presented how to do it. Examples of Jupyter notebooks for ROS learning and robot control are available at https://github.com/AdoHaha/ipython_robot_prototyping.

Most of the examples can be run without access to actual robots by first launching “robot simulators”:

roslaunch ipython_robot_prototyping simulators.launch 

and changing ROS_MASTER_URI in all notebooks:

%env ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311