Overview

ROS Robot Operating System

• ROS Wikipedia Overview

Robot Operating System (ROS) is a software framework for robot software development, providing operating system-like functionality on a heterogenous computer cluster. ROS was originally developed in 2007 under the name switchyard by the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in support of the Stanford AI Robot (STAIR) project. As of 2008, development continues primarily at Willow Garage, a robotics research institute/incubator, with more than twenty institutions collaborating in a federated development model.

• Willow Garage
  • About Willow Garage

• ROS.org

ROS (Robot Operating System) provides libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. It provides hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message-passing, package management, and more. ROS is licensed under an open source, BSD license.

Publish and Subscribe Architecture

• Publish and Subscribe Pattern Wikipedia Overview

Publish–subscribe is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers, called subscribers. Instead, published messages are characterized into classes, without knowledge of what, if any, subscribers there may be. Similarly, subscribers express interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages that are of interest, without knowledge of what, if any, publishers there are.

Robot Configuration

Hardware

• CPU
  • fit-PC2 - The fit-PC is a small, light, fan-less nettop computer manufactured by the Israeli company CompuLab.
    • CompuLab fit-PC2
    • Wikipedia fit-PC link

• Actuators and Sensor controllers
  • Phidgets - Phidgets are a set of "plug and play" building blocks for low cost USB sensing and control from your PC.
    • Phidgets Inc
    • Trossen Robotics US distributer

• Sensors
  • Webcam

• • Ultrasonic Transducers
    • LV-MaxSonar-EZ1
    • Trossen Robotics US distributer