RoPod/Tutorials/ROS installation
Get familiar with ROS
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a framework for writing robot software. ROS uses concepts like nodes, topics, messages, etc. Get familiar with them by searching on the web. You can start reading at: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Concepts
Install ROS
ROS have several distributions (versions). Install ROS kinetic distribution, which is the one compatible with ubuntu 16.04. Follow the instructions on this webpage.
http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/Ubuntu
Then, install roslaunch, which will be useful when launching multiple ROS applications from packages.
sudo apt install python-roslaunch
To test the installation, run in a terminal the ROS core:
roscore
Then in another terminal you can type:
rostopic list
You should be able to see at least the following:
/rosout /rosout_agg
You can get familiar with ROS using the tutorials for beginners available at http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials.
Get familiar with catkin workspaces, which will allow you to build a ROS node in the future. Moreover, get familiar on how to run a ros node.
In the next part of the tutorial we are going to see how Matlab and ROS can communicate.