ROS Programming: Building Powerful Robots

Getting started with the ROS-MATLAB interface

The ROS-MATLAB interface is a useful interface for researchers and students for prototyping their robot algorithms in MATLAB and testing it on ROS-compatible robots. The robotics system toolbox in MATLAB provides the interface between MATLAB and ROS. We can prototype our algorithm and test it on a ROS-enabled robot or in robot simulators such as Gazebo and V-REP (http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/downloads.html). From MATLAB, we can publish or subscribe to a topic, such as a ROS node, and we can make it a ROS master. The MATLAB-ROS interface has most of the ROS functionalities that we need.

Here is a block diagram shows how MATLAB is communicating with a robot which is running on ROS.

Figure 1: ...