Understanding ROS as a robotics framework

Developing complex robotics applications from scratch can be a tedious task. Even if we develop it, if our software is not modular and not reusable by others, the same process must be repeated by others, which is like reinventing the wheel. This situation applies not only to robotics but also to other technology domains. That’s why we come across a lot of software frameworks and libraries. These frameworks have ready-made functions or an Application Programming Interface (API) of commonly used algorithms that can be integrated into our program to help us quickly develop our applications.

In robotics software development, we have several software frameworks to create robot applications quickly. One of the popular frameworks available is ROS. Using ROS, we can quickly develop robotics applications by reusing existing code that other developers have already developed. Before jumping into the details, we will start by addressing the...