The Robotic Operating System (ROS) provides:
- drivers to access hardware
- a message passing system (rosmessages being pushed to and read from topics)
- a parameter handling system (rosparams being set in a central store and read/written by nodes)
- the concept of a node: A small unit of functionality where different nodes communicate with each other using messages
- a set of default interfaces so that different nodes can understand each other
- command line utilities to help understand, what's going on withitn the ROS system
- visualization tools (same purpose)
- a build and dependency management system (
catkin) - tooling to start up complex sets of nodes to perform more complex tasks
To start a node in a namespace, run
ROS_NAMESPACE=ns rosrun package node
If a node normally publishes to foo, it will now be publishing to /ns/foo.
Remap topics for a node when launching:
rosrun package node name:=new_name
will now publish to new_name, if it internally used the name name.
set globally:
rosparam set name value
set for a node:
rosrun package node _name:=value