What is a Robotic operating system (ROS)?
ROS is a powerful open-source robotic operating system.
Although ROS isn’t an operating system itself but rather a series of software frameworks for robot computing, it offers services like controlling the robot and setting up its programming interfaces.
And though it’s not considered as a “standalone” computer language, RobotOS can be embedded in applications written in C/C++ using an HTTP server and Java, making it easy for other robots to communicate with your robot.
How Robotic operating system works
The robots stack includes three distinct elements – There is the base operating system, a middleware toolchain containing nodes GUI tools, and the programming framework referred to as the nodes. All three play an integral part in how your robots operate.
This includes how your bots communicate with each other, how they work on interactive nodes, how they are organized, and how they are stored.
The robot operating system that comes pre-loaded with Rosaceae is referred to as the “base system”.
It’s what allows all of the other software and modules to be loaded onto your computer.
The nice thing about having the Robot OS pre-loaded is that it simplifies the process of configuring and running the other applications.
In other words, all you have to do is use your mouse or keyboard to start the applications.
ROS interface
The robotic interface starts with the familiar Windows Explorer-like start menu.
From there you’ll jump into the nodes folder, find your robots, create or download a new image or program, and even edit existing data.
From the folders, you’ll also go to the program manager and see if your programs are working together.
One application or system can have dozens or hundreds of roles and settings.
You can easily manage your robots like this with just a few mouse clicks.
The next step up in the hierarchy is the dependency tree. Dependency nodes contain definitions of the applications or programs you want to use on your computer, and you can easily see them with the rospack display.
When you click on a particular entry, you will be taken to the source or target application or build system and see what changes were made.
It’s pretty easy to visualize the dependency structure and see which applications have what dependencies on each other.
Once you have the dependency hierarchy in place you can start building your robots.
The easiest way to do this is through the rosetta stone interactive user interface.
It walks you through the entire process of configuring a new terminal, connecting the computers, and programming the Robot OS.
Once you finish, you simply enter a new terminal and get started.
Once again, the graphical display shows you the properties of the robot, and the roScore package shows you the current state of your robot.
The interface is so easy to use it seems like you are having fun developing your robot.
The roostat package includes some very useful GUI tools such as the catkin editor, which allows you to create new terminals.
The graphical display lets you browse the various options for the terminal, including the size and color.
The graphical user interface shows you all of the parameters and information about your robot and gives you a visual representation of the changes you are making.
It is very helpful when debugging problems. In addition to graphical widgets, the packages include many small utility programs, which make your life much easier.
One feature that is lacking in most applications today is support for the Linux operating system.
The creators of Roboquad/ROBOT built a Linux VPS. But if you want to use Linux and develop your robot, you can use the Linux forwarding port from the official repository or build a system. You can also download the Linux binaries.
The packaging was done in a way to make it easy to install on a web server, making it easier to develop your robot and upload the applications to roboquad.
