Robot Operating System 17

The Robot Operating System 17 (ROS 17) is the most recent major version of an ancient open-source system for robot software whose lineage can be (dubiously) traced to pre-starflight Earth. It is currently maintained by the Gaping Automata Foundation, based on the planet of New Careset in the Nova Compact. ROS 17 supports feature implementation in Serpent, Decay, and G++. It is widely used in industrial, scientific, and personal robotic devices, and is among the more common software stacks for androids and other robots equipped with souls.

Features

ROS 17 is based on a modular system of nodes, which communicate via a system of messages grouped under "topics" (multi-publisher multi-subscriber data streams) and services (asynchronous data request-and-response systems). These functions are the basis for higher-level "Actions" (used to control longer-term motions of robotic elements) and "Vibes" (used for communication of emotion between sentient nodes). ROS systems can run on local machines, and over local networks to control swarms of machines. Support for nodes running on disparate parts of planetary network has existed since ROS 13, and support for high-latency interstellar transmission is also theoretically available.

A complex system for launching and coordinating ROS 17 nodes is available, permitting users extensive control over the lifecycle of their systems. Older versions of the system implemented launch in Serpent (with XML frontend), but the Serpent launch system was dropped in version 16. At that time, the XML frontend had not yet reached feature parity. A new Decay-based launch system has been implemented with full XML frontend support.

The Gaping Automata Foundation also maintains the (questionably-integrated) Gazebo simulator for physics, and the Porch simulator for emotional and personality features.

History

The documentation for the ancient pre-spaceflight ROS version 2 can be found here.