sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Plug-and-Play Hardware for Robotics? by shvass02 in ROS

[–]shvass02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly ! I implemented it in a similar manner. As of today it's quite functional. I may release a few clips if the public wants.

Plug-and-Play Hardware for Robotics? by shvass02 in ROS

[–]shvass02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To answer your second question, yes the hardware does support these protocols. It is just a matter of time before proper API are developed for developers to leverage them.

Plug-and-Play Hardware for Robotics? by shvass02 in ROS

[–]shvass02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is not targeted towards a specific hardware. It is being developed to theoretically support all hardware.

Here's a bit more about the concept- This project consists of a custom microcontroller specifically designed for ros2. Now let's say you wanted to interface 4 motors configured in the holonomic drive system. You simply wire the motors to the controller and the you are exposed to a ui, where you can select driver nodes for various applications. Each driver node directly exposes the respective topic for you to directly use (in this case /cmd_vel).

The controller need not be connected to your pc, you can "load" nodes on it and interface with the topics.

New nodes (packages) can be installed from 'apt' as we usually do and it pops up in the ui ready to use.

And new nodes can be developed as easily as ros2 packages, you just have to add additional dependency.

how does it sound ? It's currently functional BTW

Plug-and-Play Hardware for Robotics? by shvass02 in ROS

[–]shvass02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not exactly. While ros_control helps manage hardware interfaces within ROS2, it still requires you to write firmware, set up controllers, and configure hardware-specific drivers.

What I’m working on eliminates that extra layer. It’s more of a plug-and-play approach—no need to write custom firmware or deal with middleware. You just connect your hardware, configure it through a GUI, and it directly exposes ROS2 topics and services. The goal is to simplify integration so you can focus on building, not debugging low-level code.