1. Robot Operating System (ROS)
Weijun Huang
Computer Sciences

2. OUTLINES What is ROS? Design goals of ROS Usage of ROS SDK
Build and Install ROS
Sample Project
Embedded ROS

3. What is ROS? ROS is a framework for robotics:
from drivers to state-of-the-art algorithms, with developer tools
ROS was originally designed for a specific set of challenges encountered when developing large-scale service robots.
Some design goals of ROS [Quigley 2009]:
Peer-to-peer
Multi-lingual
Tools-based
Thin
Free and open-source

4. Design Goals of ROS? 1. Peer to Peer Heterogenous network situation:
onboard robots (at Ethernet) communicate wirelessly (slow) with offboard machines running intensive tasks (e.g. speech recognition).
Running a central data server would result in heavy traffic across the wireless link.
Peer-to-peer connectivity avoids the issue (with buffering or fanout software if necessary).
ROS provides a lookup mechanism name service for peer-to-peer network topology: processes can find each other at runtime

5. Design Goals of ROS? 2. Multi lingual (language neutral):
supports four languages: C++, LISP, Octave and Python, and provides other language ports
supports cross-language development, by using a so-called interface definition language (IDL)
3. Tools based
This is an effort of complexity management of ROS
microkernel design: a large number of tools/modules are used to build/run the ROS components

6. Usage of ROS SDK
Downloadable from ROS.org:
select Ubuntu, OS X, Windows, … ,
Let select Windows –
WinRos sdk
development environment: Microsoft Visual Studio
What needs to build the SDK:
Uses Windows sdk 7.1
Compiles with cmake/nmake.
Compiles in Release mode
(Currently 32 bit support)

7. Usage of ROS SDK
ROS robot software distributions:
ROS Hydro Medusa (September, 2013)
ROS Groovy (December, 2012)
ROS Fuerte (April, 2012)
ROS Electric (August, 2011)
ROS Diamondback (March, 2011)
ROS C Turtle (August, 2010)
ROS Box Turtle (March, 2010)

8. Build and Install ROS Install the following dependencies --
Windows SDK 7.1
CMake 2.8.7
Empy 3.1
PyNose 1.1.2
PySetupTools 0.6c11
Extract the following archives to C:\opt
Rosdeps : boost , bzip2 1.06, log4cxx 0.10
WinRos Build Script (pay attention to downloading winros.bat finally)
> mkdir C:\work
> cd C:\work
> wget --no-check-certificate

9. Build and Install ROS > cd C:\work > winros sdk download
Then the cmd prompt will guide you to finish the config, build, install
Python packages:
Python : add C:\Python27\ and C:\Python27\Scripts to your PATH.
PyWin32 217
PyYaml 3.10
PySetupTools 0.6c11
Rospkg 1.0.6
WinRos Sdk extract into C:\opt.

10. Sample Project Back to ROS.org: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Installation
select robots -- PR2, Dr. Robot, Kobuki, …
Let select Kobuki
Tutorial for testing automatic docking:
Download a sample project of Kobuki from

11. Embedded ROS
An embedded ROS is an interface framework that provides control & communication architectures for robots, such as multi-sensor systems [Song 2008].
It supports human-robot interaction (keyboard, mouse, menu interface, etc).
Three function layers:
Low level function call manager (LLFCM) menu
Mid level functions layer (communication layer)
High level user interface dialog
control the mobile robot and display sensor status

12. Reference
Quigley, M., et al, 2009, ROS: an open-source Robot Operating System,
Song, T., et al, 2008, Embedded Robot Operating Systems for Human-Robot Interaction, Computer-Human Interaction: 8th Asia-Pacific Conference, Springer- Verlag
Mueke & Powell, 2010, “A Distributed, Heterogeneous, Target-optimized Operating System for a Multi-robot Search and Rescue Application”, Modern Approaches in Applied Intelligence: 24th International Conference on, Springer- Verlag