Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - Second Edition

Using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation Stack

In the previous chapters, we have been discussing the design and simulation of a robotic arm and mobile robot. We controlled each joint of the robotic arm in Gazebo using the ROS controller and moved the mobile robot inside Gazebo using the teleop node.

In this chapter, we are going to address the motion planning problem. Moving a robot by directly controlling its joints manually might be a difficult task, especially if we want to add position or velocity constraints to the robot motion. Similarly, driving a mobile robot, avoiding obstacles, requires the planning of a path. For this reason, we will solve these problems using the ROS MoveIt! and Navigation stack.

MoveIt! is a set of packages and tools ...