Why ROS?

With the advent of new technological advancements in the field of robotics, it was the need of the hour which made developers find a way through which they can add functionalities to their existing programs. This saved their time from coding another program from scratch. This is where ROS came into the picture. ROS stands for robot operating system.

ROS is designed to be a loosely coupled system where a process is called a node and every node should be responsible for one task. Nodes communicate with each other using messages passing via logical channels called topics. Each node can send or get data from the other node using the publish/subscribe model.

I am writing this blog to let the readers know why should they use ROS in their next robotics project…

1. ) Wide variety of packages available:- There are numerous packages available for the functionalities one may want to introduce in its hardware project. Be it related to image processing, database management, app development, etc., there are packages that would suffice for every programming need.

2. ) Tools that come handy:- ROS has loads and loads of simulation tools available. Gazebo is the most famous simulation tool used in most of the ROS projects for simulation purpose. Rviz is one of the tools used for visualizing the data published.

3.) Multiple ROS masters, Multi-control! :- With multiple ROS masters, one can easily control multiple robots, simultaneously at the same time. Developers these days choose ROS for controlling a fleet of robots.

4.) Modularity:- Programming in ROS helps in introducing different functions to the code without the need of developing another one from scratch. You just need to add the necessary packages to the existing code but make sure that the nodes, subscribers, and publishers are well defined(Information on nodes, subscribers and publishers will be discussed in another blog).

5.) ROS is open source:- ROS is open source, making it a more preferable option than any other framework. New packages are introduced very frequently and the ROS community makes sure that any error or bug in the package is made public to the community members and is fixed as soon as possible.

ROS being open source paves the way for hardware developers to try their hands on open source contribution. Students can also take part in GSoC through ROS.

Companies like MoveIT! are actively trying hard to show the advantages of ROS to the rest of the developer society.

I tried to summarise why developers should choose ROS over other frameworks. More details on various components of ROS will be shared in another blog. Till then keep developing!! :)