Programming Robots with ROS

Chapter 1. Introduction

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a framework for writing robot software. It is a collection of tools, libraries, and conventions that aim to simplify the task of creating complex and robust robot behavior across a wide variety of robotic platforms.

Why? Because creating truly robust, general-purpose robot software is hard. From the robot’s perspective, many problems that seem trivial to humans can actually encompass wild variations between instances of tasks and environments.

Consider a simple “fetch an item” task, where an office-assistant robot is instructed to retrieve a stapler. First, the robot must understand the request, either verbally or through some other modality, such as a web interface, email, or even SMS. Then, the robot must start some sort of planner to coordinate the search for the item, which will likely require navigating through various rooms in a building, perhaps including elevators and doors. Once arriving in a room, the robot must search desks cluttered with similarly sized objects (since all handheld objects are roughly the same size) and find a stapler. The robot must then retrace its steps and deliver the stapler to the desired location. Each of those subproblems can have arbitrary numbers of complicating factors. And this was a relatively simple task!

Dealing with real-world variations in complex tasks and environments is so difficult that no single individual, laboratory, or institution can hope to build a complete system ...