Alright, so it's your first time with the Turtlebot. Where to being? The online Turtlebot ROS wiki has some tutorials/tips on how to start. Now, the Turtlebot and Workstations have been configured, so that's no big deal. You are ready to “Get Started.”

Most likely, if you are new to the Turtlebot, then you are new to ROS (Robot Operating System). ROS is a bunch of written code that runs on top of the standard operating system with lots of functionalities and operations like those of an operating system but tailored to Robotics. Most of the time, you will have to run the robot's “operating system” in order to interact with and control the robot. This is described in the “Bringup” set of tutorials. They have some instructions, that you should read and roughly understand, but the ones below are what I recommend following.

1. Launch Turtlebot ROS: First, log into the laptop using your username/password, then open up a terminal (Usually by hitting the funny icon at the top left and then typing terminal). As per the bringup tutorial, the launch process involves typing:

  roslaunch turtlebot_bringup minimal.launch

which will start all of the services needed for Turtlebot operation. This includes a service for commanding the motors, a service for reading from the sensors, and a service for keeping track of the robot's estimated SE(2) configuration, amongst other things. If you want to see what's going on, then entering

  rosnode list

will show what kinds of services are running. If you get nothing, then perhaps something went wrong. Something that may provide similar information is the following

  rostopic list

which provides a list of services that can be communicated with. Some of the services will take a message and act on it (like sending motor commands). Some of the services will send a message if you subscribe to them (like receiving the Turtlebot's SE(2) configuration or getting kinect data). This shows you a little bit the underbelly of the publisher/subscriber model of ROS.