To learn robotics properly, one needs a robot to play with. Building a robot is costly and not simple, so a simulated robot can be utilised to replace the physical one. Most of robots for research purpose currently utilise Robot Operating System (ROS), because it is flexible, modular, and open source. Mastering ROS is a must for robotics researchers or enthusiasts nowadays. Baxter robot, created by Rethink Robotics, is a good medium to learn ROS and robotics.
Although Baxter is a great robot with unique features, but it is reasonably expensive. For learning purpose, it can be replaced with Baxter simulator. Previously, it is only available for the organisation who has bought Baxter, and it does not have any grippers attached in the Baxter’s arms. Since the end of 2015, the simulator has been updated, one of the biggest change is the grippers addition, and now it is open-source, so everyone can use it. This post will guide you to learn to use Baxter simulator in more systematic way.
Why Baxter simulator?
Here are several reasons to use Baxter simulator:
- It is fully functioning, and open source, simulator.
- Baxter is ROS-ready. It provides a user friendly Python API that wrapped ROS interfaces in Python classes. Baxter simulator is developed in Gazebo, another open source program.
- While one can learn about ROS by using the turtlebot simulator, it is only a mobile robot. On the other hand, Baxter has two manipulators, so one can learn to control the arm control using a simple joints control, an inverse kinematics (IK) solving or a complex trajectory planning. Many other complex extension can be performed on Baxter.
- Baxter robot is well documented. This post just fills the small gap on that excellent documentation.
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