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Despite the name, ROS is not an operating system. ROS is a middleware framework that is a collection of transport protocols, development and debugging tools, and open-source packages. As a transport protocol, ROS enables distributed communication via messages between nodes. As a development and debugging toolkit, ROS provides build systems that allows for writing applications in a wide variety of languages (Python and C++ are used in this tutorial track), a launch system to manage the execution of mutiple nodes simultaneously, and command line tools to interact with the running system. Finally, as a popular ecosystem, there are many open-source ROS packages that allow users to quickly prototype with new sensors, actuators, planners, perception stacks, and more. |