Dashing Diademata, the Future of ROS |
Written by Nikos Vaggalis |
Wednesday, 19 June 2019 |
The new distribution of ROS2, code named "Dashing Diademata", is the first Long Time Support release following last year's "Crystal". Along with it, there are many new features that aim to establish ROS as an industry wide standard, to be used safely in commercial applications. But Diademata also breaks ties with its ROS1 predecessor, a move that signifies time to upgrade. That aside, API compatibility, even between ROS2's forthcoming distributions, is not to be guaranteed; the only guarantee that can be safely given is that both API and ABI are going to remain stable between the updates of Dashing. API incompatibility might sound risky, but it also signifies the resurgence the project is undergoing. A quick look on Dashing's release notes reveals some of those API changes. For example: ament_cmake If you are using the return value in a CMake condition like this: ament_index_has_resource(var ...)if(${var}) you need to update the condition to ensure it considers a string value as TRUE: if(var) rclcpp The main changes however revolve around improvements in components, intra-process communication and quality-of-service:
Operating system aside, ROS also forms the backbone on which other tools are built, for example Gazebo, as we learned back in 2016 with the article Gazebo Robot Simulator Makes Version 7. Reflecting on it, with Gazebo, which resembles a CAD tool, instead of designing buildings you could instead design robots before they got manufactured. To do so, Gazebo builds on the shoulders of ROS to emulate working with models which start from a simple biped robot with leg joints up to Nasa's Robonaut 2; this way you could test all combinations of sensor payloads and flight modes virtually before moving to the real hardware. Since that article, ROS has grown into a complete operating system catering for the every need of the researcher or integrator, therefore posing as a trustworthy solution to robot automation. Diademata seals that claim.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 June 2019 ) |