Summary
This chapter introduced ROS 2, a very popular framework for the development of robotic applications. The chapter provided an overview of the role played by ROS in the provision of modularity and reusability in the platform, allowing developers to quickly create and adapt robotic applications through the reutilization of existing code. It provided an overview of key elements of ROS, including inter-process communication infrastructure, hardware abstraction, licensing under open-source terms, and huge libraries and tools for tasks like visualization, debugging, and communication between different parts of a robot.
It also drew some comparisons between ROS 1 and ROS 2. The latter is more robust because of DDS, has enhanced security features, and is cross-platform compatible. It provides insight into the architectural improvements in ROS 2, focusing on the use of DDS as a communication middleware that can offer flexibility and high performance in real-time applications. The...