Robot Operating System

Robot Operating System

ROS Kinetic Kame version logo
Cart pushing simulation in RVIZ
Original author(s)	Willow Garage Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Initial release	2007
Stable release	Kinetic Kame[1] / 23 May 2016
Development status	Active
Written in	C++ or Python
Operating system	Linux
Type	Robotics suite, OS, library
License	BSD license
Website	www.ros.org

Robot Operating System (ROS) is a collection of software frameworks for robot software development, (see also Robotics middleware) providing operating system-like functionality on a heterogeneous computer cluster. ROS provides standard operating system services such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. Running sets of ROS-based processes are represented in a graph architecture where processing takes place in nodes that may receive, post and multiplex sensor, control, state, planning, actuator and other messages. Despite the importance of reactivity and low latency in robot control, ROS, itself, is not a real-time OS (RTOS), though it is possible to integrate ROS with real-time code.^[2] The lack of support for real-time systems is being addressed in the creation of ROS 2.0.^[3]

Software in the ROS Ecosystem^[4] can be separated into three groups:

• language-and platform-independent tools used for building and distributing ROS-based software;
• ROS client library implementations such as roscpp,^[5] rospy,^[6] and roslisp;^[7]
• packages containing application-related code which uses one or more ROS client libraries.

Both the language-independent tools and the main client libraries (C++, Python, LISP) are released under the terms of the BSD license, and as such are open source software and free for both commercial and research use. The majority of other packages are licensed under a variety of open source licenses. These other packages implement commonly used functionality and applications such as hardware drivers, robot models, datatypes, planning, perception, simultaneous localization and mapping, simulation tools, and other algorithms.

The main ROS client libraries (C++, Python, LISP) are geared toward a Unix-like system, primarily because of their dependence on large collections of open-source software dependencies. For these client libraries, Ubuntu Linux is listed as "Supported" while other variants such as Fedora Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows are designated "Experimental" and are supported by the community.^[8] The native Java ROS client library, rosjava, however, does not share these limitations and has enabled ROS-based software to be written for the Android OS.^[9] rosjava has also enabled ROS to be integrated into an officially-supported MATLAB toolbox which can be used on Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.^[10] A JavaScript client library, roslibjs has also been developed which enables integration of software into a ROS system via any standards-compliant web browser.

History

ROS was originally developed in 2007 under the name switchyard by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in support of the Stanford AI Robot STAIR (STanford AI Robot)^[11][12] project. Description of STAIR on its homepage:

Our single robot platform will integrate methods drawn from all areas of AI, including machine learning, vision, navigation, planning, reasoning, and speech/natural language processing. This is in distinct contrast to the 30-year trend of working on fragmented AI sub-fields, and will be a vehicle for driving research towards true integrated AI.

From 2008 until 2013, development was performed primarily at Willow Garage, a robotics research institute/incubator. During that time, researchers at more than twenty institutions collaborated with Willow Garage engineers in a federated development model.^[13][14]

In February 2013, ROS stewardship transitioned to the Open Source Robotics Foundation.^[15] In August 2013, a blog posting^[16] announced that Willow Garage would be absorbed by another company started by its founder, Suitable Technologies. The support responsibilities for the PR2 created by Willow Garage were also subsequently taken over by Clearpath Robotics.^[17]

Applications

ROS areas include:

• a master coordination node
• publishing or subscribing to data streams: images, stereo, laser, control, actuator, contact ...
• multiplexing information
• node creation and destruction
• nodes are seamlessly distributed, allowing distributed operation over multi-core, multi-processor, GPUs and clusters
• logging
• parameter server
• test systems

ROS package application areas will include:

• perception
• object identification
• segmentation and recognition
• Face recognition
• gesture recognition
• motion tracking
• egomotion
• motion understanding
• structure from motion (SFM)
• stereo vision: depth perception via two cameras
• motion
• mobile robotics
• control
• planning
• grasping

ROS-Industrial^[18] is a BSD-licensed “hardware-agnostic” software development program to create a Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) for industrial robots.

Version history

ROS releases may be incompatible with other releases and are often referred to by code name rather than version number. The major releases so far are:

Distro	Release date	Poster	EOL date
Kinetic Kame	May 23, 2016		Current stable version: 2021-05-30
Jade	May 23, 2015		Older version, yet still supported: 2017-05-30
Indigo	July 22, 2014		Older version, yet still supported: 2019-04-30
Hydro	September 4, 2013		Old version, no longer supported: 2014-05-31
Groovy Galapagos	December 31, 2012		Old version, no longer supported: 2014-07-31
Fuerte Turtle	April 23, 2012
Electric Emys	August 30, 2011
Diamondback	March 2, 2011
C Turtle	August 2, 2010
Box Turtle	March 2, 2010
Legend: Old version Older version, still supported Latest version Latest preview version Future release

Ports to robots and boards

• ABB, Adept, Fanuc, Motoman, and Universal Robots are supported by ROS-Industrial^[19]
• Baxter^[20] at Rethink Robotics, Inc.
• BeagleBoard. The robotics lab of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium:^[21] has ported ROS to the Beagleboard
• HERB^[22] developed at Carnegie Mellon University in Intel's personal robotics program
• Husky A200^[23] robot developed (and integrated into ROS) by Clearpath Robotics
• PR1^[24] personal robot developed in Ken Salisbury's lab at Stanford
• PR2^[25] personal robot being developed at Willow Garage
• Raven II Surgical Robotic Research Platform^[26][27]
• rosbridge protocol and server^[28] Brown University^[29] developed the rosbridge protocol to enable any robot or computing environment to integrate with ROS using JSON-based messaging, such as for common web browsers, Matlab, Microsoft Windows, OS X, and embedded systems
• Shadow Robot Hand^[30] – A Fully dexterous humanoid hand.
• STAIR I and II^[31] robots developed in Andrew Ng's lab at Stanford
• SummitXL:^[32] Mobile robot developed by Robotnik, an engineering company specialized in mobile robots, robotic arms and industrial solutions with ROS architecture.
• Nao^[33] humanoid: University of Freiburg's Humanoid Robots Lab^[34] developed a ROS integration for the Nao humanoid based on an initial port by Brown University^[35][36]
• UBR1^[37][38] developed by Unbounded Robotics, a spin-off of Willow Garage.

ROS packages

ROS contains many open source implementations of common robotics functionality and algorithms. These open source implementations are organized into "packages". Many packages are included as part of ROS distributions, while others may be developed by individuals and distributed through code sharing sites such as github. For a list of some of the available packages for ROS, see: http://www.ros.org/browse/list.php

See also

• Open hardware
• Robotics middleware
• Open source software

References

1. "ROS Kinetic Kame". Wiki.ros.org. Retrieved 2015-06-01.
2. ROS-Introduction http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Introduction
3. Kay, Jackie. "Proposal for Implementation of Real-time Systems in ROS 2". Retrieved 16 August 2016.
4. "Browsing packages for indigo". ROS.org. ROS. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
5. "Package Summary". ROS.org. ROS. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
6. "Package SUmmary". ROS.org. ROS. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
7. "Package Summary". ROS.org. ROS. Retrieved 21 February 2016.
8. "ROS/Installation - ROS Wiki". Wiki.ros.org. 2013-09-29. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
9. "android - ROS Wiki". Wiki.ros.org. 2014-04-12. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
10. "Robot Operating System (ROS) Support from MATLAB - Hardware Support". Mathworks.com. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
11. STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot http://stair.stanford.edu/
12. Morgan Quigley, Eric Berger, Andrew Y. Ng (2007), STAIR: Hardware and Software Architecture (PDF), AAAI 2007 Robotics Workshop
13. "Repositories". ROS.org. Retrieved 7 June 2011.
14. Morgan Quigley, Brian Gerkey, Ken Conley, Josh Faust, Tully Foote, Jeremy Leibs, Eric Berger, Rob Wheeler, Andrew Ng. "ROS: an open-source Robot Operating System" (PDF). Retrieved 3 April 2010.
15. "Osrf - Ros @ Osrf". Osrfoundation.org. 2013-02-11. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
16. "employees join Suitable Technologies". Willow Garage. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
17. Robotics Corner 2014/01/15 (2014-01-15). "Clearpath Welcomes PR2 to the Family". Clearpath Robotics. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
18. ROS-Industrial http://ros.org/wiki/Industrial
19. http://rosindustrial.org/
20. Baxter http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/products/baxter-research-robot/baxter-research-robot-qa/
21. K U leuven http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/%7Eu0062536/embsensor.html
22. HERB http://personalrobotics.intel-research.net/
23. Husky A200 http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/husky
24. PR1 http://personalrobotics.stanford.edu/
25. PR2 http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/robots
26. B. Hannaford, J. Rosen, Diana CW Friedman, H. King, P. Roan, L. Cheng, D. Glozman, J. Ma, S.N. Kosari, L. White, 'Raven-II: AN Open Platform for Surgical Robotics Research,' IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 60, pp. 954-959, April 2013.
27. "BioRobotics Laboratory | Biorobotics Laboratory - University of Washington". Brl.ee.washington.edu. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
28. rosbridge protocol and server http://www.ros.org/wiki/rosbridge
29. brown-robotics http://brown-robotics.org/
30. SDH http://www.shadowrobot.com/products/dexterous-hand/
31. STAIR I and II http://stair.stanford.edu/index.php
32. "Summit XL - Robotnik". Robotnik.es. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
33. "nao - ROS Wiki". Ros.org. 2013-10-28. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
34. Humanoid Robots Lab http://hrl.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/
35. brown-robotics http://brown-robotics.org/
36. G.T. Jay, Post to ros-users mailing list announcing ROS support for the Nao
37. "Specification". Unbounded Robotics. Retrieved 2014-07-12.
38. Ackerman, Evan (2013-10-21). "UBR-1 Robot From Unbounded Robotics Revolutionizes Affordable Mobile Manipulation - IEEE Spectrum". Spectrum.ieee.org. Retrieved 2014-07-12.

Notes

• STAIR: The STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot project, Andrew Y. Ng, Stephen Gould, Morgan Quigley, Ashutosh Saxena, Eric Berger. Snowbird, 2008.

Related projects

• RT middleware – Robot middleware standard/implementations. RT-component is discussed / defined by the Object Management Group.

External links

• Official website
• Official wiki page
• ROS Answers (Questions)
• List of robots running ROS
• ROS-Industrial website