A MATLAB guy wants to do a project in ROS
Background + Objective!: I am a MATLAB/Computer Vision guy and I want to start to write a some piece of useful code in ROS. I have a basic understanding of ROS (topic, node, message ...). What I want to do is to write a 3D version of local occupancy grid map in 5-6 months (It will be as a part of my PhD thesis). Result of 2d version of local occupancy grid map that I have done in MATLAB is available in here: Link
Problems!: The problem is ROS is a bit confusing for me. Maybe because of the lack of my skills in ROS and CPP. In my view MATLAB is a small body with huge amount of muscles (lots of codes, toolboxes and a great source of helps for writing small project) and ROS has a just big skeleton (very good structured for making big/real projects) and building every chunk of muscle for filling this skeleton will needs a lots of time and efforts... . Most of my questions are regarding programming skills in CPP and ROS. Some one please give me a big picture of what should I do:
- Is it possible to directly write/implement a medium size cpp project in ROS or should I use an ide? e.g. Qt creator, Eclipse ...
- how can I debug my codes in ROS?
- how can I visualize 3D grids in ROS/CPP?
P.S. I will add more questions later.