Getting started with the ROS-MATLAB interface

The ROS-MATLAB interface is a useful interface for researchers and students for prototyping their robot algorithms in MATLAB and testing it on ROS-compatible robots. The robotics system toolbox in MATLAB provides the interface between MATLAB and ROS. We can prototype our algorithm and test it on a ROS-enabled robot or in robot simulators such as Gazebo and V-REP (http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/downloads.html). From MATLAB, we can publish or subscribe to a topic, such as a ROS node, and we can make it a ROS master. The MATLAB-ROS interface has most of the ROS functionalities that we need.

Here is a block diagram shows how MATLAB is communicating with a robot which is running on ROS.

Figure 1: The MATLAB - Robot communication diagram

From the preceding figure, you can understand, MATLAB is equipped with powerful toolboxes such as computer vision, control system and signal processing. We can fetch the data from robot through ROS interface and process...