New Way to Learn Robotics at Home or School
U.S. real wages have declined over the last 35 years despite GDP growing to new heights. Although there are a variety of factors responsible for this economic morass for workers, the role of technology is widely acknowledged as one of the principal drivers enabling unprecedented worker productivity. Automation, in particular, has enabled workers to do more with less.
As with previous technological revolutions, many agree that robotics will generate new opportunities for highly-skilled employees while at the same time eliminating lower-skilled jobs. Economists, futurists, and technologists agree that demand for specialized skills in robotics and computer science will continue to grow. High schools, community colleges, STEM centers, and universities have leaped to the opportunity by adding robotics classes and training programs.
Meet the Robot Operating System
Juxtaposed against the need for increased technical skills is the advent of a revolution in robotics software development. Nowhere is this revolution more evident than in the growth of the Robot Operating System, or ROS.
ROS was conceived at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the late 2000′s. The effort was aimed at developing a software framework that allows different parts of a robot to communicate with each other. Since then, it has evolved into a significant open source initiative with a vibrant developer community. Since that early beginning, ROS has broadened to support a variety of robot functions that developers previously had to reinvent with each new project … and, because it’s open source, it’s free!
With ROS, you can download many of the modular software packages needed to support tasks such as motion planning, navigation, or object recognition. The developer only has to plug these packages into his robot design to enable capabilities that used to take years to develop.
ROS, contrary to its name, is not really an “operating system” in the vein of Linux or Windows nor is it a software standard. It is instead a set of guidelines for developing robotics software that allow different components to communicate and interact. It allows a sensor, for example, to work with the other parts of the robot. Later, if you want to replace a laser sensor with an optical camera to do mapping, you just plug in the ROS package for the camera.
Meet the ROSVirtual Learning Platform
ROS requires a computer running the Ubuntu operating system and the installation of the various complex software packages. If you are like most individuals and schools, you probably only have Windows computers. To make ROS work on Windows, you have to install additional complex software to emulate the Ubuntu environment.
A simpler alternative is to run a remote ROS session over the web using ROSVirtual.com. This requires nothing more than a web browser, which can run virtually on any computer. In addition to a hosted ROS environment, the site includes a curated set of lessons and tutorials that takes the user into the ROS world step by step.
C++ and Python knowledge is particularly helpful, but anyone with some programming experience will be able to learn new concepts.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT ROSVirtual
