From Dave Coleman
Two Colorado robotics Meetup groups, Boulder is for Robots and ROS on the Rocks, teamed up to provide an evening full of ROS centric demos, presentations, and discussion. Promises of robot demos and free pizza drew an audience of more than 60 people from academics, industry, and robotics enthusiasts. The event was hosted on the CU campus, and was sponsored by the local Colorado robotics company, Orbotix - creators of the Sphero platform.
Daniel Packard, a contractor with Clearpath Robotics, kicked off the evening with a bare bones introduction to the ROS framework. He introduced many of the core concepts in ROS, and he concluded with a brief demonstration using Sphero, an Xbox360 controller, and a pan-tilt mount from RoadNarrows Robotics.
Dave Jilk of eCortex spoke about his efforts to use ROS to connect a neural network simulation system, known as Emergent, to simple robotic platforms, including an iRobot Create and an attached Android phone. His approach included running ROS on a cloud server with ROSBridge, and a Gazebo simulation of the combined platform.
Dave Coleman, a PhD student at CU Boulder, introduced one of ROS's most popular packages - the MoveIt! Motion Planning Framework. Drawing from his experience helping develop it, he discussed its features, some of the theory behind it, and its popularity and usage today in controlling robots around the world.
All in all, the event was a great success!
Leave a comment