ROS Bridges for Common Field Busses
/Hardware interfaces are particularly important for any
future integration of ROS-I with production systems. During
2015, we noted four new repositories emerged that span
the range of prominent industrial field busses:
• CANOPEN™: CANOPEN is a fieldbus with origins in
automotive applications (CAN), but applied to automation.
We are grateful for the efforts of Mathias Lüdtke and
Florian Weisshardt from Fraunhofer IPA for the ros_
canopen package.
• EtherNet/IP™: EtherNet/IP is an Ethernet-based real-time
communication bus standard that was created by
Allen-Bradley (Rockwell Automation). Thank you ClearPath Robotics for developing and releasing a
ROS driver for EtherNet/IP.
• EtherCAT™: Probably the first fieldbus supported in
ROS for the PR2, EtherCAT is an Ethernet-based realtime
communication bus standard that was created by
Beckhoff Automation. We appreciate Intermodalics for
maintaining the EtherCAT package for ROS.
• PROFINET™: PROFINET, an open automation standard
and part of IEC 61158 is fully compatible with all the
features of standard Ethernet, and also capable of
real-time performance. We recognize the efforts of
package developer Frantisek Durovsky from the Technical
University of Kosice in Slovakia along with his mentor
Shaun Edwards (SwRI), the financial support of Google
Summer of Code program, and technical support from
Siemens.