November 2014 Archives

ROS Aerial Vehicle Users,

We'd like to invite you to participate in an effort to develop a standard set of messages for communicating within robotics components on Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). At the IROS workshop on MAV's (proceedings) this fall it was identified that the MAV community has many different implementations of the same capabilities. They are often all closely related and are almost compatible but rarely is it easy to switch between different implementations, or use different implementations together. From that discussion it was proposed to work toward building up a common way to communicate and enable the MAV community to collaborate most effectively.

To make this happen we have setup a mailinglist and wiki pages to be a place to coordinate this effort (MAV SIG, mailing list). If you are interested in this topic we ask that you join, listen and participate so that we can get as broad a spectrum of voices as possible.

We have chosen the ROS SIG format as it has proven effective at developing standard messages which are used by many people every day. ROS SIG's are relatively unstructured and allow adaptation for differences in each community and process.

We plan to use the ROS .msg format as a way to formalize the messages, since it is a relatively compact way to express messages which has representations in many languages. The most important part of the process will not be the actual msg file that comes out, but the datatypes for which people can rely on being isomorphic when transitioning between systems.

Having common datatypes will allow us to have better modularity and interoperability. As an example from the ROS ecosystem, there are 10+ different laser scanner drivers in the ROS ecosystem and 18+ different camera drivers (ROS sensors). Because these drivers all use a standard set of messages a user of those sensors can switch which sensor they are using on their system, or deploy systems with different sensors and the rest system will continue to operate without modifications. There are more complicated examples such as the navigation stack which has a standard set of messages for sending commands and providing feedback. This same interface has been used for differential drive, holonomic, free flying, and even walking robots.

There are already dozens of MAV related ROS packages released and we hope that developing these standard messages can help coordinate the efforts of the many contributors already working on aerial vehicles in ROS.

If you would like to know more please check out the SIG (LINK). if you're at all interested please join the process. We've started a thread at here to kick off the process.  

From Florian Weißhardt via ros-users@

Position: Software Engineer, possibility to obtain PhD degree

Location: Fraunhofer IPA, Stuttgart, Germany

Experience: Strong skills in software design and C/C++ development and rich experience in ROS development

Finding solutions to organizational and technological challenges, particularly within the production environment of industrial enterprises. That, in a nutshell, is the key focus of the research and development work carried out at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA. With 14 individual departments engaged in the fields of Corporate Organization, Automation and Surface Engineering, our R&D projects aim to enhance production processes and make products more cost-effective and environmentally friendly by identifying and exploiting the potential for automation and streamlining at clients' companies.

The Fraunhofer IPA department for robot and assistive systems develops service robots for various application fields (e.g. domestic, inspection, logistics, production assistance, manufacturing, etc.) with the goal of reliable, robust and safe service of these robots in everyday environments. These applications require complex software systems including navigation, planning, perception and manipulation for dynamic and changing environments and intuitive human-robot interaction.

The position covers the development of concepts and tools to reduce integration effort and simplify application development for these complex robotic systems in the frame of public funded national and EU projects. The transfer of the results to industry by organizing workshops, publishing articles relevant magazines and exhibiting demonstrators at fairs and conferences is part of the job description as well.

You have completed your master or diploma degree with excellent results and are interested in interdisciplinary research with high-tech robots like Care-O-bot or KUKA iiwa. You could already gather experience in scientific working and optimally already presented your first results at an international conference. You are confident in software architectures and software engineering and have practical experiences with the development of robot applications in ROS.

We offer you a highly interesting and diverse work environment with both contact to top robotics researchers and industry. In addition to obtaining a phd degree, the position encompasses early transfer of project and staff responsibility. For the implementation and validation of your ideas, we offer exceptionally equipped laboritories and test environments.

Qualifications/Requirements:

• Rich experience in ROS development
• A Master/Diploma degree from a top university in computer science, robotics or software engineering
• Strong skills software design and C/C++ development
• Proficient oral and written English skills

Advantageous are:

• Experience with model-driven engineering approaches
• Oral and written German skills

Please include the following documents in your application:

• Cover letter that expresses your motivation and (research) goals
• CV
• Transcripts of all obtained degrees (including scholar education)
• References and certificates relevant to the position

Please send your application to martina.goetzner@ipa.fraunhofer.de referring to position IPA-2014-109.