A brief introduction to ROS

OK, before we do all of the work described in the following section to be able to use ROS 2 – the second version of the Robotic Operating System – let’s answer your questions. What is ROS, and what are its advantages?

The first thing to know is that ROS is not an actual operating system, such as Linux or Windows. Rather it is a middleware layer that serves as a means of connecting different programs to work together to control a robot. It was originally designed to run Willow Garage’s PR2 robot, which was complex indeed. ROS is supported by a very large open source community and is constantly updated.

I used to be a ROS skeptic, and frankly, reading the documentation did not help my first impression that it was cumbersome at best and difficult to use. However, at the insistence of one of my business partners, we started using ROS for a very complex self-guided security guard robot called RAMSEE, designed for Gamma 2 Robotics...