So what is Ross and why is it so prevalent in the robotics community?
Ross stands for Robot Operating System and it was released in 2007 as a means to create a collaborative
software framework for robotics development.
You see, robots are hard enough as it is to build, but roboticists always run into the issues of having
to write all of their operating code from scratch.
Generally in some type of embedded system.
See type language.
For example, it could take weeks just to code a blinking indicator light, creating the firmware controller,
managing the serial communications between your microcontroller and main computer, and then actually
creating the high level software node to dictate when the light should blink a certain way.
Not to mention all the debugging and visualization systems you would have to create so that you could
actually make sure your code sensors and actuators are all acting as intended.
That's a lot of coding just to make a light blink.
Thus, Ros was born as an open source project, which comes with tons of built in tools as well as packages
created by other developers to minimize the amount of software development time needed to get your robot
up and running.
Rusty came around to fill in some of the gaps the original Ross one failed to be able to fill.
Rust One excelled in applications in controlled areas such as robotic arms directly connected to a network.
But since then, the robotics application space has grown tremendously.
Applications such as limbed, outdoor terrain, capable mobile robots, drone swarms, and so much more.
Rusty creates a new decentralized style of robotics development.
It caters towards features such as multi operating system support, allowing security configurations
for no data streams, and a reliable, independent communication structure that doesn't fall apart if
there are disruptions in the network.
It also allows for cross ROS version support, so you can still work with systems that were previously
developed with ROS one.
So why should you learn Ros?
Bottom line, it saves you as a robotics developer time by giving you an optimized framework which many
other developers have contributed to.
To help you get up and running quickly and scale your robotic systems.
Ros is used in a variety of applications from research and development, robotic arms, humanoid robots,
self driving cars and so much more.
Not to mention the multiple programming language and libraries developed for it with C++ and Python
officially supported, as well as community driven libraries in Java, JavaScript, Lua, and so much
more.
Ross continues to be developed and improved by the vast open source robotics community all from which
you and your robots can benefit from.
So let's go ahead and jump into Ross so you can see exactly what it has to offer.