In this chapter, we will discuss a technology that is trending in the robotics industry: driverless or self-driving cars. Many of you may have heard about this technology; those who haven't will get an introduction in the first section of this chapter.

In this chapter, we will first start with a software block diagram of a typical self-driving car. We will then learn how to simulate and interface self-driving car sensors in ROS. We will also cover the interfacing of a drive-by-wire car into ROS, visualize the car virtually, and read its sensor information. Creating a self-driving car from scratch is out of the scope of this book, but this chapter will give you an abstract idea of self-driving car components and tutorials to simulate it.

This chapter will cover the following important topics:

• Getting started with self-driving cars
• A software block diagram of a typical self-driving car
• Simulating and interfacing self-driving car sensors in ROS
• Simulating a self-driving car with sensors in Gazebo
• Interfacing a DBW car into ROS
• Introducing the Udacity open source self-driving car project
• The open source self-driving car simulator from Udacity