ABB and ROS (Robot Operating System)

Robot Controller
1

Hi Everyone,

I’m curious: I keep hearing about this Robot Operating System (ROS) in the research community but now it’s coming to industrial systems. I’ve been using it for my quadcopter hobby project but now they have it for industrial robotics! There is an ABB module, Motoman module and supposedly Motoman is starting to write their control system in it, and there are even modules that run on Fanuc robots. Here’s a link to the industrial ROS site: http://rosindustrial.org/

So my question is: As a robotics integrator who currently uses RobotStudio for nearly all the programming we do, will the advent of ROS have any effect on the industrial world and RobotStudio? And how do you think it will be used? Do you think it will be used as a parallel system or will it become a fundamental groundwork like Windows has become for computers? I think it’s a fascinating software system but I’m really curious if and how it will be used in industry.

Thanks!
-Andrew

2

Andrew,

ROS-Industrial has made a point to focus on those tasks/technologies for which there isn’t an off the shelf solution. In particular, we are focusing on 2D/3D perception driven robot tasks. These types of applications are dynamic in that the robot cannot be pre-programmed to follow a specific path up front. The robot must be smart enough to sense and plan in complex environments utilizing it’s own perception. These are not the typical robot task for which RobotStudio was designed. Whether ROS-I is more widely adopted is up to the vendors to decide. For now ROS-I sits side be side with the vendor software/hardware. I would hope in the future that each robot vendor would find value in some part of ROS-I and incorporate it in their products. However, only time will tell. Please let me know if you would like any more information on ROS-I.

Shaun