A Senior Staff Renewal IR&D Project at Willow Garage, 10-R8224
Principal Investigator
Shaun M. Edwards
Inclusive Dates: 05/16/11 – Current
Background — The "Robot Operating System" software, better known as ROS, is an open source project that provides a common framework for robotics applications. ROS is being heavily used by the research community for service robotics applications, but its technology can be applied to other application areas, including industrial robotics. ROS capabilities, including advanced perception and path/grasp planning, can enable industrial robotic applications that were previously technically infeasible or cost prohibitive.
SwRI has already utilized ROS for several industrial and advanced manufacturing projects (see illustration for an example). Its use has enabled rapid development and overall lower cost. However, ROS use in these projects has been narrowly defined and one goal of the ROS Industrial program is to generate a framework for broader applications.
Approach — The principal researcher for this project is working closely with ROS developers at Willow Garage to develop an open source ROS software stack (software suite) to support the use of ROS for industrial applications. The software will provide a standardized interface for a variety of robot controllers, thus enabling robot-agnostic ROS software to be used on a variety of robotic platforms. The resulting software developed under this project will be released as open source. This is an ongoing project scheduled to be completed in March 2012. An initial version of the software has been released and is available at http://code.rosindustrial.org
Accomplishments — The project has completed the following milestones:
Proof-of-concept code demonstrating remote control of an industrial robot via the ROS software.
Development of a platform independent messaging structure will allow ROS to interface with a variety of industrial robotic platforms.
