Robot Operating System

Overview

This page serves as a short introduction to ROS for the new or potential user. Although ROS is a tremendously complex and multifaceted software package, this page endeavors to outline the basic uses and functionality provided by ROS's framework. This is done through example by discussing the high level design of a ROS system developed by Jake Ware and Jarvis Schultz in 2011 for the puppeteer robot system. There is also a short "highlights" section that directs new users towards some useful ROS features that might not be readily apparent.

Introduction

Above all else, ROS should be seen as a tool to create and manage complex electromechanical systems. Originally developed by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 2007, the ROS project was adopted by Willow Labs in 2008 and remains in their care.

"ROS is an open-source, meta-operating system for your robot. It provides the services you would expect from an operating system, including hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly-used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. It also provides tools and libraries for obtaining, building, writing, and running code across multiple computers." [Source: ROS Intro]

Installation

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