Thanks to the efforts of Mark Silliman, Austin Meyers, and Melissa Eaton we have a new set of tutorials for the TurtleBot targeted at making the TurtleBot and ROS in general available to the web developers in general. The tutorials include going all the way through to setting up a web interface. Find them at learn.turtlebot.com
Here's his announcement.
Free tutorials bring robotics programming to the web developer masses
Learn.turtlebot.com provides an easy launch pad for anyone interested in robotics
If you've ever dreamed of learning to program a robot, but didn't know how or where to start, your
day just got a whole lot better -- and your next few weekends are booked.
Learn.TurtleBot.com debuted this week its free, 30-session tutorial, which promises to teach
developers how to use the Robot Operating System (ROS) to drive a TurtleBot. The latter is an open source hardware and software platform that can autonomously navigate to objects and places.
"There have been so many technical barriers to robotics from the cost to the fact that most of the literature is aimed at academics," says the tutorial's creator Mark Silliman. "I want robotics to be
accessible to anyone who is interested."
The tutorials are written at a high-school level and can be completed over a couple weekends. Each includes a video and takes about an hour to finish. By the series end, developers will be able to direct their TurtleBot to bring them coffee to their desk (view video).
While the chance to build a coffee-bot is undoubtedly exciting, Silliman developed and funded the tutorials with an even loftier aim: to help create the next generation of robotics programmers.
Silliman, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Smartwaiver, has a long-held passion for the robotics industry and its potential.
"I want to live in a world with a robot in every home, and though we have the computing power to do so, we also need a critical mass of people studying the field," Silliman says.
He contends that robots are ready for the first wave of amateur developers to build off the early work of robotics pioneers and take the field to new heights. Software packages such as ROS as well as the relatively affordable TurtleBot, which you can buy for $1,000 or build yourself for less, have helped make robotics even more accessible.
And now the learn.turtlebot.com tutorials push the needle even further by teaching core robotics programming concepts in a fun and affordable way.
"We're standing on the shoulders of many brilliant people and engaged, innovative communities," Silliman says. "I hope this helps break down even more barriers and puts us that much closer to making the robot revolution a reality."
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