Robot Operating System (ROS)

Robot Operating System (ROS) is a middleware (middleware) open source developed by Willow Garage company and Laboratory of artificial intelligence of Stanford University. ROS represents a set of libraries and tools which provides low-level control of the robotic equipment, abstraction of hardware and other services.

2018: Announcement of OS

At the beginning of October, 2018 Microsoft announced the operating system for robots. It is about the version of Robot Operating System (ROS) for Windows which was submitted within the ROSCon 2018 conference in Madrid.

Earlier the community of developers ported ROS on WIndows, having started the Core ROS project. Now Microsoft constructed official option of ROS for Windows 10. The first version of new OS received name ROS1. It is "seamlessly" integrated with the Visual Studio development environment and supplied with such functions as hardware acceleration of Windows Machine Learning (ML), computer vision and also cloud services of Azure Cognitive Services and Azure IoT Suite.

Microsoft announced Windows for robots

At the ROSCon 2018 conference the Microsoft company showed the Robotis Turtlebot 3 robot using release of ROS under the name Melodic Morenia. The robot works running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise installed on the Intel Coffee Lake NUC computer and uses the new ROS node to which Windows Machine Learning with hardware acceleration is applied. Using computer vision, the robot could distinguish the person and approach it.

The company also showed work of the environment of modeling of ROS in a cloud of Azure and a great number of the robots working in the virtual world connected to the system of orchestrating and managed C by the help of Azure IoT Hub.

In addition to ROS optimized under Windows of the version, in Microsoft in cooperation with the Open Robotics and ROS Industrial Consortium organizations work on "expansion of opportunities" of the operating system for production, "improvement of productivity and an investment payback" in industrial robots.

People were always fascinated by robots. Today the advanced robots supplement our life, as at work, and at home — the senior developer Windows IoT Lou Amadio says. — As robots reached the high level of technical development, tools for development were required. We consider robotics with artificial intelligence as universally available technology for improvement of human capabilities, and this development will introduce controllability and security of Windows 10 IoT Enterprise in the innovation ecosystem of ROS.

According to the programmer, thanks to warehouse robots delivery of online purchases after the order became possible next day, and robots vacuum cleaners saved owners of pets from efforts with daily cleaning of floors from wool.

By the beginning of October, 2018 files and documentation to ROS1 are available. The Microsoft company promises to let out the same for ROS2 "in the nearest future", it is told the message of software giant of September 28.

Developing this project, Microsoft pursues the aim on introduction of "intellectual network edge in robots", the used houses, in education, the industry and commercial purposes.

In Windows ML there are API interfaces for adding of elements of artificial intelligence in devices on network edge. In this platform tools with hardware acceleration of assessment of models of machine learning on devices with Windows 10 using which developers can apply machine learning in Windows applications are implemented. ^[1]

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