The Robot Operating System - ROS

ROS thrives on the continuous interaction and exchange of ideas within the developers' community. The framework's core concept is the ease of replacing existing nodes with new and improved or customised versions. This includes basics like sensor interfaces and device drivers but also advanced features such as 3D mapping or dynamic path planning.

Device manufacturers, system integrators, researchers and private developers all contribute to ROS. This creates and maintains a vast set of tools and possibilities, freely available as open source packages for others to use. Most developers use this existing foundation because it helps them save precious time and focus on creative work. Their results are then made available to other ROS users. This way ROS is always up to date and the best way to get your hands on the latest cutting-edge algorithms.

Of course Neobotix is also part of the development efforts and present on GitHub and on ros.org.

ROS is a core component of all Neobotix products. Both complete mobile robots and separate components can be used with ROS.

All our robots are delivered with a basic ROS installation and ready for use. This includes all drivers and hardware related nodes as well as reliable packages for creating maps of the environment, for localisation and path planning.

Optional components, like the popular USBoard, can be integrated seamlessly into the robots. They can also be operated as stand-alone devices or be integrated in your own project.

You can use our extensive and easy to use simulation packages for drafting your project and for developing and offline testing of new software modules.

Beside very detailed 3D robot models these packages also contain realistic worlds and a preconfigured and easy to adjust navigation setup. You can create maps based on simulated sensor output and let the virtual robot explore its environment.

This will give you a good insight into our robots and their capabilities. You can find out how they react to obstacles and changes in the environment and can also experiment with your own modifications.

The ROS Development Studio offers the easiest way to test our mobile robots under ROS and get a first impression of their potential.

A guest account is perfect for initial tests and offers many advantages:

• Work with Neobotix robots free of charge
• No time consuming ROS installation
• No client required - work directly in your web browser
• Many helpful tutorials and online courses

Currently, we plan to continue our ROS support until EOL, that is dated for the year 2025. For the case of ROS 2, we will be supporting all the LTS distributions and rolling distributions on demand from our customers.

You can find out more about ROS 2 here.