View source for ROS (Robot Operating System)

{{Refimprove|date=January 2010}}
{{Infobox software
| author                 = [[Willow Garage]] and the [[Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory]]
| operating system       = [[Linux]], [[Mac OS X]] and [[Microsoft Windows]]
| latest release version = [http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/08/03/ros-c-turtle-release "C-Turtle"]
| latest release date    = {{Start date and age|2010|08|03}}
| genre                  = Library, OS
| license                = [[BSD license]]
| website                = http://www.ros.org/
}}
{{Portal|Robotics}}
'''ROS''' is a [[robot]] [[operating system]] originally developed in 2007 under the name ''switchyard'' by the [[Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory]] in support of the Stanford AI Robot ([http://stair.stanford.edu/ STAIR]<ref>
{{cite | title = STAIR: Hardware and Software Architecture | author = Morgan Quigley, Eric Berger, Andrew Y. Ng | year = 2007 | url = http://www.aaai.org/Papers/Workshops/2007/WS-07-15/WS07-15-008.pdf | publisher = AAAI 2007 Robotics Workshop}}
</ref>) 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 [http://www.ros.org/wiki/Repositories]<ref>
{{cite web| url = http://www.robotics.stanford.edu/~ang/papers/icraoss09-ROS.pdf| title = ROS: an open-source Robot Operating System| accessdate = 3 April 2010| author = Morgan Quigley, Brian Gerkey, Ken Conley, Josh Faust, Tully Foote, Jeremy Leibs, Eric Berger, Rob Wheeler, Andrew Ng}}
</ref>.

[http://ros.org/wiki ROS] provides standard operating system services such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly-used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. It is based on a [[Graph Theory|graph]] architecture where processing takes place in nodes that may receive, post and multiplex sensor, control, state, planning, actuator and other messages.  The library is geared towards a [[Unix]]-like system ([[Ubuntu (operating system)|Ubuntu]] Linux is listed as 'supported' while other variants such as [[Fedora (operating system)|Fedora]] and [[Mac OS X]] are considered 'experimental') but is intended to be cross-platform. At present [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] is listed as having 'partial functionality' <ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Installation| title = ROS/Installation| accessdate = 8 April 2010}}</ref>.

ROS has two basic "sides": The operating system side ''ros'' as described above and ''ros-pkg'', a suite of user contributed packages (organized into sets called ''stacks'') that implement functionality such as [[simultaneous localization and mapping]], planning, perception, simulation etc.

ROS is released under the terms of the [[BSD license]], and is [[open source software]].  It is free for commercial and research use.  The ''ros-pkg'' contributed packages are licensed under a variety of open source licenses.

== Applications ==
ROS areas include
* A master coordination node
* Publishing or Subscribing to data streams (images, stereo, laser, control, actuator, contact ...)
* Multiplexing information
* Node creation and destruction
* Nodes are seamlessly distributed, allowing distributed operation over multi-core, multi-processor, GPU and clusters.
* Logging
* Parameter server
* Test systems

ROS Package application areas will include

*Perception
*Object Identification
*[[Segmentation (image processing)|Segmentation]] and Recognition
*[[Facial recognition system|Face Recognition]]
*[[gesture recognition|Gesture Recognition]]
*[[Video tracking|Motion Tracking]]
*[[Ego-motion]]
*[[motion understanding|Motion Understanding]]
*[[Structure from motion]] (SFM)
*[[Stereopsis]] Stereo vision: depth perception from 2 cameras
*motion
*[[Mobile Robotics]]
*control
*planning
*grasping

==Ports to robots and boards==
* [http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/robots PR2] personal robot being developed at Willow Garage.
* [http://personalrobotics.stanford.edu/ PR1] personal robot developed in Ken Salisbury's lab at Stanford.
* [http://personalrobotics.intel-research.net/ HERB] developed at CMU in Intel's personal robotics program.
* [http://stair.stanford.edu/index.php STAIR I and II] robots developed in [[Andrew Ng|Andrew Ng's]] lab at Stanford.
* [http://www.iheartrobotics.com/2010/02/ros-on-beagleboard.html ROS-On-Beagleboard] the robotics lab of the [[Katholieke Universiteit Leuven]], [[Belgium]] has ported ROS to the [[Beagleboard]].

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}
# [http://ROS.org ROS Wiki]
# STAIR: The STanford Artificial Intelligence Robot project, Andrew Y. Ng, Stephen Gould, Morgan Quigley, Ashutosh Saxena, Eric Berger. Snowbird, 2008.

==External links==
{{Portal|Free software}}
* [http://www.ros.org/wiki/ ROS Website]

[[Category:Free software operating systems]]
[[Category:Robots]]

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