During her Outreachy internship at Open Source Robotics Foundation, Nadya Ampilogova worked on a TurtleBot User Experience project.

The goal was to extend learn.turtlebot.com with lessons taking advantage of the simulation environment available in Gazebo. The use of robot simulation instead of a physical robot makes the tutorials accessible to a larger audience. All examples are with TurtleBot because it is a common way to start learning robotics. Many universities use the TurtleBot when teaching introductory robotics courses. In creating the lessons, Nadya focused on making the content engaging and accessible by integrating images and videos. The topics include how to install software, setup tools, write your first program to control a TurtleBot and lots more. Upon completion of this tutorial you will be able to create a TurtleBot application and test it in simulation.

The result of the project is twenty lessons about TurtleBot in simulation. They cover not only basic features but also give a brief overview of more complicated subjects. This tutorial makes studying robotics easier for people who may not have access to a real robot all of the time but who have a computer that can run the simulator.

You can find the tutorial on learn.turtlebot.com. This internship was a part of the Outreachy Program. You can read more about Nadya’s internship on her blog.