ROS 2 is a software framework for building robot applications, offering libraries, tools, and core infrastructure for everything from research prototypes to production systems.
The ros2/ros2 repository acts as the umbrella entry point for the platform, pulling together a large collection of core ROS 2 repositories and packages used to build the wider ecosystem. It’s designed to provide a standard robotics software platform with support for modern middleware, developer tooling, and multiple release distributions.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Umbrella repository that tracks the core ROS 2 codebase through the
ros2.reposmanifest. - Provides libraries and tools for building robotic applications, including drivers, algorithms, and developer tooling.
- Supports multiple platforms including Linux, Windows, and macOS.
- Uses modern middleware abstractions with support for DDS-based communication and other ROS 2 middleware implementations.
- Offers multiple release distributions with extensive documentation, tutorials, and API references.
- Includes interoperability options for working alongside existing ROS 1 systems.
Website: github.com/ros2/ros2
Support:
Developer: Open Robotics and the ROS community
License: Apache License 2.0 and BSD 3-Clause License
Related Software
| Robotics Software | |
|---|---|
| NASA Vision Workbench | Image processing in the context of machine vision |
| DART | Dynamic Animation and Robotics Toolkit |
| Gazebo Sim | Robot simulation made easy |
| AprilTag | Visual fiducial system popular for robotics research |
| Webots | Multi-platform desktop application used to simulate robots |
| ROS | Software framework for building robot applications |
| ARGoS | Physics-based simulator designed to simulate robot swarms |
| RTAB-Map | Graph-based SLAM software for 3D mapping and navigation |
| MoveIt | Robotic manipulation platform for ROS 2 |
| OpenRTM-aist | Component-oriented development of robot systems |
| ROSboard | Lightweight web dashboard for visualizing ROS data |
| Vizanti | Web-based visualizer and mission planner for ROS robots |
| Choreonoid | Integrated graphical framework for robotics development |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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