Robot Operating System (ROS) Basics discussed during ASTI Robotics Webinar
24 November 2020 – The DOST Advanced Science and Technology Institute conducted a webinar on using an industry-grade and open-source platform for robotics, which aims to discuss the basics of the Robot Operating System (ROS) and its various applications.
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a middleware that provides a framework for developing or writing robot software. It consists of various tools, libraries, and conventions that aims to provide researchers a backbone in terms of speeding up the development of robots.
Mr. Joshua Javier and Ms. Marinel Sigue from the DOST-ASTI talked about this in detail during the webinar, together with a demo on how to run ROS on a robot platform.
Mr. Javier, who has helped work on the development of locally made AI Robots in the DOST-ASTI – utilizing machine vision via neural networks capable of enhancing post-disaster efforts – gave guests an overview on the current state of robots, the advantages of ROS, Simple Robot Architecture, ROS Robot Architecture, and ROS Architecture.
"Think of ROS as a communication protocol, much like how the different organs in our body communicate with each other," says Mr. Javier. "The way ROS works is that each of its nodes, in order to communicate, goes through the [ROS] Master. [These nodes] publish and subscribe to different data and signals, and it does something with the data it receives."
Ms. Sigue, who is also part of the DOST-ASTI's AI Robot project – connecting and programming the sensors on the robot platform via ROS – conducted a demo showcasing the basic functionalities of ROS on a Turtlebot3 Waffle Pi platform.
The demo showcased the moving the robot via the ROBOTIS remote control, moving the robot via RVIZ interactive markers, and Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Basic ROS commands were also discussed, along with the user interfaces essential to the system.
The Using an Industry-Grade and Open-Source Platform for Robotics webinar is only one of first of the DOST-ASTI's multiple virtual events lined up in celebration of the 2020 National Science & Technology Week (NSTW).
For more information about DOST-ASTI's projects, visit https://asti.dost.gov.ph/. To join the virtual NSTW Celebration, register now at https://nstw2020.dost.gov.ph/.