This week, we explored the basics of ROS and started working with the Stretch robot. We went through several labs, including:

• Stretch Body Interface – we learned how to control the robot's arm, base, and lift using Python.

• Robot Tools & Navigation – we tested built-in tools like hello-robot-stretch-tool and practiced moving the robot with joystick commands.

• ROS Communication – we gained hands-on experience with topics, services, and parameters using rostopic, rosservice, and rosparam.

• RViz & TF Trees – we visualized Stretch’s sensor data and transforms, which helped us understand how the robot perceives space.

• URDF Models – we viewed Stretch’s URDF model and learned how its physical components are represented in simulation.

Challenge: The ROS node communication and TF tree concepts were tricky at first, especially understanding how different frames relate in space.

Highlight: Successfully controlling the arm via ROS and seeing real-time feedback in RViz was super rewarding.