ROS is an open source software framework for programming robots and developing complex robotics applications. In addition, ROS is sometimes called a meta-operating system or middleware software framework because it performs many of the functions of an operating system, but it requires a host operating system, such as Linux.
Moreover, like any operating system, it provides a hardware abstraction layer to build robotics applications without worrying about the underlying hardware. The core of ROS is a message-passing middleware framework—synchronous or asynchronous—where processes and threads can communicate with and transport data between each other even when they are running from different machines. In addition, ROS software is organized as packages, offering good modularity and reusability, which can be integrated with and used for any custom robotic application with minimal changes.
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a framework that is widely accepted and used in the robotics community, which ranges from researchers to professional developers of commercial robots. ROS was originally started in 2007 by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL) under the name SwitchYard, in support of the Stanford AI Robot project.
Since 2008, Willow Garage has been continuing the development, and recently ROS has been actively maintained by the Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF):
- ROS: http://www.ros.org/
- OSRF: http://www.osrfoundation.org/
Let's start with the introductory chapter of this book, where we will learn how to install ROS on various platforms.