What Windows ROS Launch Means for Robotics Development
It’s an exciting time for more accessible robotics development. The interplay between robotics and edge computing has the power to completely transform how traditional industries go smart, especially with new technologies like AI and IoT.
We recently announced progress in our commitment to robotics development with the release of ROS for Windows 10. ROS for Windows and Azure products are a signal that development will become easier, more accessible, and ultimately more dev-friendly to those familiar with Windows environments.
I’d like to quickly break down why this matters, and what specifically ROS does to make robotics development projects easier.
Easing into Easier
For today’s robotics developers and researchers, a Robot Operating System (ROS) has become the preferred robotics toolkit, simply because it makes the complex challenge of coding robotics just a little easier. It’s not really an OS in the traditional sense, but rather a middleware, or a collection of software and tools upon which robotics can be developed and communicated across. It’s proving increasingly successful in commercial and industrial robotics software tasks.
● Cross-platform Operability
Robotics is an emerging field with lots of different pieces, software and components that need to work together. So far, the most collaborative way to do robotics has been through the ROS-layer, via making source code accessible, platform independent, and easy to develop across many different environments. ROS allows messages to pass across very different components and systems, different coding languages, etc. For example, at ROSCon 2018, we demonstrated Turtlebot 3 running Windows 10 IoT, with various ROS releases used for steering, and another used for machine learning. This kind of collaboration between robot parts and software, all from different makers, wouldn’t be as easy to achieve without ROS.
● Flexibility and Modularity
There are tons of software and hardware modules when it comes to building robots, yet the cost of integrating, developing, and implementing each one can be extremely high. ROS reduces this complexity by allowing robot parts and software to work well together so manufacturers of parts and authors of code can synergize and borrow results from each other. Modularity also makes robot systems more reliable, as each module, be it sensor or motor, functions individually, allowing one to fail without compromising the entire robot.
● Linux and Windows
The most widely used operating system for ROS is Linux, and ROS for Windows represents a more familiar space for developers looking to do work in a Windows environment. Microsoft will provide documentation, development, and deployment solutions for Windows in ways that users are familiar with. Our hope is that developers will be able to use familiar tool sets, e.g. Visual Studio, Azure, AI, IoT, and Git, while building their robotics projects.
Robotics on Azure, IoT, and More
This launch also coincides with Microsoft joining the ROS Industrial Consortium — a group with the mission to extend the advanced capabilities of ROS to manufacturing and improve the productivity and return on investment of industrial robots.
ROS for Windows looks towards the future where advanced technologies from Microsoft, like Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Azure IoT, Cognitive Services, etc. can be implemented at scale. This shift will enable further commercial, industrial and manufacturing capabilities.