About ROS

Before we get started with learning ROS, let's first know "what is ROS ?". As the name states, ROS or Robot Operating System is like an operating system for robotics. But this runs on a operating system, so it's more like an interface between the operating system and real world robotics. In computer terms, this is called a middleware (or a meta operating system).

It handles everything with the operating system that is required for a major robotics application, communication, for instance. It allows trying out and developing complicated ideas in isolation so that development is more efficient. It also has a supported suite of applications for simulation and visualization of data, so you can test your application as if in real time without actually doing anything on hardware first. This gives you critical insight into the functioning of your robot. Most importantly, all the "behind the scene background stuff" is already programmed into it, so that you can focus on the frontend aspects more.

Enough about it, let's get started...

Getting Started

Let's get started with learning ROS, but first we need to setup a few things before we get started. We need the following:

• A system running Ubuntu or Debian. I'd suggest Ubuntu 18.04 as a great choice to get started. You can learn how to install Ubuntu on a system from here.
  • If you're a beginner to Linux, you can check this out.
• An internet connection (you obviously have that if you're reading this)

I've divided the learning phase into stages, think of them as steps which you must climb one by one, in the right order. Let's get started.

Learning Stages

The learning stages are given below