ROS-I Repository: Year in Review

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We launched the ROS-Industrial™ (ROS-I™) repository in January, 2012. As we approach this first anniversary of the repository, we thought you might be interested to know how ROS-I has expanded and how it is being embraced internationally.

Here are some of the noteworthy ROS-I stories from 2012:

  • ROS-I was featured in a dozen articles by industry periodicals including IEEE Spectrum, Design News, and Technology Review.
  • ROS-I was the topic of presentations at the ECHORD workshop at ICRA, RoboBusiness Leadership Summit, ROSCon, and Robotics Industry Forum.
  • Fraunhofer IPA dedicated a conference, held in Stuttgart Germany, to ROS-Industrial.
  • We were invited to exhibit ROS-I at Automate 2013 in January (next week).
  • ROS-I now interoperates with robots from five manufacturers: Motoman, Adept, Universal Robots, ABB, and Fanuc.
  • ROS-I supports industrial peripherals including Robotiq grippers, EtherCAT field devices, 2D and 3D sensors.
  • More than half of the code in the ROS-I repository were generated by users.
  • NIST funded 2 projects that enhance ROS-I: a Human Tracker, and MT Connect/ROS Bridge.
  • ROS-Industrial Consortium Americas announced its charter members.
  • Fraunhofer IPA announced its intent to spearhead a ROS-Industrial Consortium Europe.
  • An aerospace company is leveraging ROS-I for on-the-fly path planning for painting and for off-line planning for edge processing.
  • We moved our web site to a new domain: ROSindustrial.org
  • ROS-Industrial Consortium Americas will host its first meeting in San Antonio, TX, on 3/7/13.

How you can benefit from ROS-I? You can benefit from ROS-I in many ways. First, with some programming savvy, you can use it yourself for free to solve your manufacturing robotics problems. Because it is BSD licensed, you may keep your code proprietary if you wish. If you would like help/support in learning and using ROS-I, you can join the ROS-Industrial Consortium. Through the Consortium, you can solve your non-proprietary challenges by pooling your resources with other members to fund a Focused Technical Project. These projects are a low-cost way to build capabilities that meet your near-term needs. Lastly, if you need help with a proprietary automation application that requires the advanced capabilities of ROS-I, you can contract a ROS-I system integrator directly to create a customized turn-key solution.