Successful ROS-I Kinetic Training October 2017

Another ROS-Industrial Developer Class took place on October 10th at the Caterpillar Visitor’s Center in Peoria, IL. It consisted of a three-day program that provided basic and advanced track offerings.

Day 1’s basic track covered several key ROS concepts such as messages, services, and nodes. At the end of each section students were given lab exercises allowing them to incrementally build a ROS application. The advanced track focused on building a perception pipeline from the ground up using the Point Cloud Library to process 3D sensor data.

Day 2 delved into creating a robot model using URDF and Xacro files and doing intelligent motion planning using MoveIt! Furthermore, this class also included a section on process path planning using the Descartes Planning Library.

On Day 3, students were given three lab programming exercises where they had the opportunity to create applications that combined perception and robot motion-planning concepts covered in the course. Two UR5 robots were made available so students could run their completed ROS applications on real hardware.

The attendees were from various organizations, including Caterpillar, Boeing, ABB, IDEXX Laboratories, Magna, and Tormach. We extend our thanks to all of them for attending and for their positive feedback. The class curriculum can be found here.

THE FULL CLASS WITH SWRI ROS-INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT STAFF INCLUDED

THE FULL CLASS WITH SWRI ROS-INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT STAFF INCLUDED

Call for participation: ROS-Industrial Conference 2017 (Dec 12-14, Stuttgart - Germany)

Five years after the very first public event entirely devoted to discussing the potential benefits of a shared, open-source framework for industrial robotics and automation, Fraunhofer IPA will host the 2017 edition of the ROS-Industrial Conference in Stuttgart, Germany, on December 12 to 14. From its inception five years ago, the initiative went from proof of concepts developed by a few organizations envisioning to advance manufacturing through open source, to:

  • a worldwide initiative, with three regional consortia financially backed by more than 50 organizations
  • a growing collection of software packages, expanding the capabilities and the platform support of ROS
  • a number of installations of ROS-powered equipment working in production within industrial environments

We are pleased to invite you to join us in Stuttgart to reflect on those past 5 years, gauge the current status of the initiative through tech talks and application examples, and hear from the experts about the next obstacles to overcome for open-source robotics. You are welcome to browse the updated schedule of the event, as well as to preregister (the event is sold out and the waiting list is full!)

From left to right, a selection of the demos, talks and tours offered to the attendees of the event: Drag⊥ Cloud navigation; Robot lab (ground floor) and "Milestones of Robotics" museum (mezzanine) - images copyright Fraunhofer IPA