Day 2: Experimenting with ROS

Getting ready

An alarm was set for 7 a.m., and everyone had to wake up and initiate their morning routines. Surprisingly, this didn’t cause too much clashing. We had our breakfast in the hostel. Once we finished eating, we packed our backpacks and walked to PXL.

Our First Experience with ROS

We had our first programming lesson centered around robotic operating systems, or ROS for short. ROS is a framework used to control robots. We were also introduced to Gazebo, a virtual simulation environment in which we could test our code without the risk of crashing an actual robot.

Once we got set up, we could experiment with controlling a TurtleBot (a small robot) using ROS in our virtual simulation, using the keyboards of our laptops as input. We learned that ROS is a system of nodes that work on a pub/sub system. There are nodes that publish data and one or more nodes that subscribe to receive the data, hence the name pub/sub system. First, we published the move we wanted the robot to make based on the key pressed on our keyboard, after which the robot received and executed this instruction.

Coming Up with a Business Idea

In the afternoon, a brainstorming session was scheduled in which we worked on the ideation part of our project. This was done in the groups assigned at the beginning of the week.

We were offered the possibility of pitching our ideas to other groups so that we could get feedback on our initial ideas. This helped us all improve our ideas and prepare for the official pitch the next day. During our practice, we were surprised by the fire alarm, so we had to evacuate the building. We had to wait outside for about 10 minutes, after which we were let back into the building.

Afterward, we headed back to the hostel to drop off our stuff in order to head out and find something to eat. We ate fries in a small restaurant located opposite the train station.

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