ROS Robotics By Example

Networking the netbook and remote computer

ROS has the ability to allow multiple computers to communicate and share nodes, topics, and services. In the case of TurtleBot, the netbook has limited capabilities for graphics applications, such as rviz. It is better to run rviz and other visualization software on a desktop computer or a powerful laptop, both of which will be called a remote computer here to distinguish it from the netbook that rides along with the TurtleBot.

The approach is to designate one computer in the network to run the ROS Master identified by the ROS_MASTER_URI variable and launch the roscore process from that computer. The choice is to set up TurtleBot's netbook as the Master since many applications of the TurtleBot require ...