How Ned2 Uses ROS (Robot Operating System)

ROS means Robot Operating System. It’s a robotics framework for developers. If you’ve already tried it, you know that ROS can be quite hard for beginners: a lot of struggle, and most of the time you need to learn on a virtual robot, because industrial robots are too expensive.

Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced ROS user, Ned2 lets you learn it hands-on, and test real robotic applications without needing an industrial-grade budget.

In this post, we’ll explain why and how Ned2 uses ROS, and how it makes it a great robot to learn on, and to test real robotics processes at home, at school, or in a lab.

Why did we choose to use ROS ?

H2 : Why does Ned2 use ROS?We wanted Ned2 to be intelligent and independent. Controlling a 6-axis robotic arm with just a microcontroller like an Arduino isn’t enough for a complete robotics environment, that’s why Ned2 runs on a Raspberry Pi 4 board with ROS, giving it much more room for features while staying independent. You don’t need to install any software on your computer to control Ned2, all you need is a web browser or NiryoStudio.

Here are some reasons why ROS made sense for Ned2:

• ROS is used more and more in real-life applications: industry, but also autonomous cars, drones, and research. It has a bright future.
• There’s a huge and growing community, from which you can get help and learn robotics with other passionate people.
• Most of ROS’s code is open source, so new features keep getting added faster.
• With ROS, you can do much more than blink an LED: environment perception with cameras and sensors, motion planning, complex system management, and more, all of which Ned2 puts to use.

How do we use ROS on Niryo One ?

Ned2 runs ROS Noetic on Ubuntu 20.04, customized for the Raspberry Pi 4 board. ROS’s core is lightweight and runs smoothly on this hardware.

Here are some ROS packages Ned2 relies on:

• MoveIt, a motion planning framework integrated into ROS. MoveIt lets you plan a trajectory for the robot, based on its URDF representation. Ned2 also comes with an official ROS 2 driver with MoveIt 2 support, for those who want to develop directly in ROS 2.
• Rosbridge: since ROS mainly runs on Ubuntu systems, it can be hard to communicate between a ROS system and a non-ROS system. Rosbridge creates a WebSocket server on the robot, so you can connect a web interface to it using libraries available in Java, JavaScript, and more.
• And several other ROS and Niryo packages, all documented in the official Ned ROS Stack documentation.

To access the ROS system on Ned2, just use SSH or an Ethernet connection. You can also run the Ned ROS stack on your own Ubuntu laptop, to develop faster and get a 3D simulation of the robot (Rviz2 package).

The code is open source

Ned2’s software is fully open source and available on GitHub, with clear, documented code so you can learn ROS, ask questions, and contribute if you want to improve parts of it or add new features.

If you run into questions along the way, Robotics Stack Exchange and ROS Discourse are great places to get help from the wider ROS community.

What you can learn with Ned2 and ROS

Since the code is open and documented, you get the opportunity to learn ROS on a real physical system. You’ll find tutorials on our NiryoAcademy platform to understand ROS basics and learn how to:

• Handle multiple packages, nodes, and launch files
• Communicate between all your nodes (topics, services, actions)
• Use the MoveIt motion planning framework
• Get data from sensors and publish it with ROS topics
• Communicate with other, non-ROS systems over Wi-Fi or Ethernet

Conclusion

Ned2 makes ROS easier to learn, whether you’re just getting started or already experienced, thanks to a real physical robot, open source code, and support from our team.

If you’re new to ROS, our guide on how to learn robotics with ROS is a good place to start. And if you’re still wondering whether ROS is worth learning at all, check out our 8 reasons to use ROS for your robotics projects.