Hands-on Robotics Teaching with ROS

Abstract

This paper describes the teaching efforts in several courses in our newly started robotics major in Tampere University of technology. While the fundamentals and theory in robotics are covered by traditional courses, hands-on experiments and student projects use ROS as software platform. ROS is introduced by an overview lecture with practical demonstration and aims to point students towards information and resources instead of providing ready-made solutions. This approach leads to much trial-and-error and a steep learning curve that, we believe, is highly valuable. We reflect on an early evaluation of our approach and conclude that the advantage of ROS as tool to educate robotics is due to its holistic nature. From low-level concepts (e.g. interfacing, communication, diagnostics) to high-level functionality (e.g. visualization, manipulation, SLAM), all are included in ROS and required to educate the next generation roboticists.