July 2015 Archives

From Kelly Kane

So you want to build a ROS robot? Sign up for this free ½ day workshop at the Hilton in Santa Clara.

Shaun Edwards - the Co-Founder of ROS-Industrial - will present:

· ROS Capabilities

  • Overview

  • Mobile Manipulation

  • Robotic Blending

· ROS Basics

  • Intro to ROS

  • MoveIt

  • Intro to ROS-Industrial

· Next Steps: Getting Started and Finding Help

Seats are limited. Register today here.

This workshop is hosted by EandM - your local SICK distributor providing sensor intelligence for industrial and professional robots.

Openings at Cruise, self-driving car company

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From Richard Ni via ros-users@

Come work with a team of robotics experts on technically challenging problems, building products that improve lives and prevent car accidents. 

Our team is small, but we move quickly. In less than a year, we built prototype vehicles that have logged over 10,000 autonomous miles on California highways. We're looking for smart, ambitious people to help develop our next generation products, ensure they're reliable and safe, and deploy them at scale.

In particular, we're looking for perception engineers to make sure our cars can accurately identify objects and predict where they'll move. Apply at https://jobs.lever.co/cruise/a2499312-3804-47d7-aad8-12c70228c4e2?lever-source=ros071515

For a complete list of our openings, see https://jobs.lever.co/cruise

ROS Jade for Gentoo

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From Hunter Allen via ros-users@

I have been successful installing ROS Jade on gentoo! I have been
working on an install guide, which you can find here:
http://wiki.ros.org/jade/Installation/Gentoo .

What's working:
 * core utilities, minus rostopic list (some issue with roslz4 and
python)
 * desktop
 * desktop_full, minus gazebo (there's a conflict building Gazebo-
5.1.0 right now - more on this later)

Just figured I'd let people know! Please email me if you have any
questions/issues.
From Ryan Gariepy via ros-users@

Are you more of a hardware hacker than a algorithm developer, but still want to get involved with the core of ROS and the ROS community? We're continuing to expand - this job may be for you!

---------------------------------

Position:        PR2 Support Technologist 
Location:        Kitchener, Ontario
Experience:    1+ Years hardware prototyping experience
Education:      Undergraduate degree or college diploma in related field

About Us

Clearpath Robotics designs and builds service robots to automate the world's dullest, dirtiest and deadliest jobs.  Our clients range from small local businesses to some of the biggest, best known companies on the planet. We built Clearpath by offering hardware and services to support advanced robotics R&D and are now expanding into commercial and industrial service robot deployments.

We employ a diverse and highly talented team who live and breathe robotics.  We believe that work must have a high "cool" factor and every day should bring new knowledge. We need more passionate people on our team who are willing and able to push the boundaries of robotics into focused and practical applications. 

Clearpath is automating the world and we need your help.  Got what it takes?


About the Job

The PR2 is the most complex and capable ROS robot out there, and we have to keep it running. Over 50 institutions use the PR2 for cutting edge robotics research. The PR2 support infrastructure consists of a server backend, test benches, and knowledgeable teammates. Due to the continued worldwide use of the PR2 platform, we need another PR2 doctor.

As a PR2 Support Technologist your job is to diagnose misbehaving PR2 hardware. You will respond directly to customer support tickets in a timely, courteous, fashion. You will certify the functionality of replacement hardware before it is sent to our valued customers. You will receive assistance from the rest of the Clearpath production, engineering, and operations teams to ensure that your work is as streamlined as possible. You must be a master problem solver, able to track down complex problems and solve them.

Your primary responsibilities will be:

* System level diagnosis of PR2 issues by examining client provided data
* Technical communication with PR2 users on forums, on our support network, and in person at ROS events
* Advanced hardware re-work with PCB design, assembly and testing
* Network troubleshooting, on the PR2 itself and on the test benches
 

About You

You want to work for a fast-paced growing company that thinks big and dreams huge. You are driven, view work as more than just a job, and are never satisfied with less than 100% effort. You want to be surrounded by people like you; creative, fun-loving, and passionate about their work. You are motivated by making an impact on your workplace and you thrive on challenging and rewarding problems.

You know how to build a robot, full stop...even if you've never done it before. You are able to take a scope and run with it, seeking help and feedback when necessary. You aren't afraid of getting your hands dirty in the shop, soldering a surface-mount component, or compiling code from a command line. You may not care for theory because you've already started building the hardware.


Required Experience/Skills

* Problem Solving and Debug skills are paramount
* Strong Technical Communicator (written and verbal)
* Well organized and responsive, with basic negotiation skills
* Design, prototyping, soldering, and debugging of basic circuits & PCBs
* Comfortable working in a Linux environment
* Strong networking knowledge, programming knowledge in C++ and Python
* Design and drafting of basic mechanical assemblies
 

Bonus points for

* Analysis of large tables of data 
* ROS
* Worked with relevant sensors and actuators (LIDAR, cameras, motor controllers, EtherCat, etc)
 

What Now?

Apply through our online job portal using this link (http://www.jobscore.com/jobs2/clearpathrobotics/pr2-support-technologist/dsI6OIl7Kr5zqBiGalkWKP?name=ROS+News&sid=69). Please submit cover letter along with your resume. Instructions for sending supporting documentation, including testimonials as well as references, pictures, web links, drawings, code samples, or other indications of exceptional past work will be provided in the confirmation email sent by our system upon receiving your application. Please include "PR2 Support Technologist" in the subject of any further communications. 

No recruiters or form cover letters, please. They do not please our mechanical masters.

Proposed: CAD to ROS Focused Technical Project

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Cross posted from ROS-I

he ROS-Industrial Consortium is tackling a topic that is of interest to the whole ROS community: conversion of CAD data to ROS-interpretable file types (e.g. URDF, SRDF). This work will be conducted over the next three years by the TU Delft Robotics Institute. To help us make ROS even more convenient to use:

From Andreas ten Pas via ros-users@


despite being available for quite a while, I wanted to officially announce our ROS Hydro/Indigo package for localizing grasps in 3D point clouds: http://wiki.ros.org/agile_grasp 

Here's a demo of Rethink's Baxter robot localizing and executing grasps in a densely cluttered scene.  

Instructions for using our package are available at the ROS wiki page given above.

If you find any problems, please report them at: https://github.com/atenpas/agile_grasp/issues
From Elmar Mair via ros-users@

We have following new open positions for the autonomous driving team in our research center in Palo Alto, CA, USA.
 
Autonomous Driving Research and Development:
 
- Autonomous Driving Camera and Computer Vision Research Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Localization/Mapping Research Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Perception Research Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Motion Planning Research Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Planning and Decision Making Research Engineer
 
 
Autonomous Driving Software Engineering:
 
- Autonomous Driving Senior Software Developer/Designer
 
- Autonomous Driving Software Developer
 
- Autonomous Driving Data Management Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Data Visualization Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving GUI/Web Development Engineer
 
- Autonomous Driving Software Testing Engineer
 
 
Please apply through the webpage.
 
We are looking forward to your application!

Real-Time ROS for Embedded Systems

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From Yigit Gunay via ros-users@

We are developing a lightweight implementation of the ROS middleware on STM32F4Discovery for interfacing embedded and general-purpose software. Currently, we can run multiple ROS nodes concurrently on STM32, and we can send ROS messages between a PC and STM32 over Ethernet (only UDPROS).

Please take a look at our repository on Github if you are interested in our real-time ROS development: https://github.com/bosch-ros-pkg/stm32.

I would appreciate your comments. Thanks for your attention!

ROSCon 2015 Talks Announced

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roscon_graphic.png

We're excited to announce a great collection of presentations that
will appear in the main track of ROSCon 2015 (also appended below):

http://roscon.ros.org/2015/#program

If you like what you see there, register for ROSCon today!



Thanks again to our Platinum Sponsors: Canonical / Ubuntu and Fetch Robotics! And our Gold Sponsors: 3D Robotics, Bosch, CoroWare, GaiTech, Qualcomm, Rethink Robotics, Robotnik, and Shadow Robot!

Long presentations

  • "MoveIt! Strengths, Weaknesses, and Developer Insights" - Dave Coleman (University of Colorado Boulder)
  • "State of ROS 2 - demos and the technology behind" - Dirk Thomas (OSRF), Esteve Fernandez (OSRF), William Woodall (OSRF)
  • "Real-time Performance in ROS 2.0" - Jackie Kay (OSRF), Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian (PAL Robotics)
  • "Bringing ROS to the factory floor: a status report on the ROS-Industrial initiative" - Mirko Bordignon (Fraunhofer IPA), Shaun Edwards (SwRI), Clay Flannigan (SwRI), Paul Hvass (SwRI), Ulrich Reiser (Fraunhofer IPA) Florian Weisshardt (Fraunhofer IPA)
  • "Commercial models for the robot generation" - Mark Shuttleworth (Canonical)
  • "An Introduction to Team ViGIR's Open Source Software and DRC Post Mortem" - Stefan Kohlbrecher (Technische Universitat Darmstadt)

Short presentations

  • "Automated Driving with ROS at BMW" - Michael Aeberhard (BMW Group Research and Technology), Thomas Kühbeck (BMW Group Research and Technology), Bernhard Seidl (BMW Group Research and Technology), Martin Friedl (BMW Group Research and Technology), Julian Thomas (BMW Group Research and Technology), Oliver Scheickl (BMW ConnectedDrive Lab, China)
  • "Working with the robot_localization Package" - Tom Moore (Charles River Analytics)
  • "ROS android_ndk: What? Why? How?" - Gary Servin (Creativa77)
  • "Accelerating Your Robotics Startup with ROS" - Michael Ferguson (Fetch Robotics)
  • "The Descartes Planning Library for Semi-Constrained Cartesian Trajectories" - Shaun Edwards (SwRI), Jorge Nicho (SwRI), Jonathan Meyer (SwRI)
  • "Phobos - Robot Model Development on Steroids" - Kai von Szadkowski (University of Bremen)
  • "ROS on DroneCode Systems" - Lorenz Meier (ETH Zurich and PX4), Roman Bapst (ETH Zurich and PX4)
  • "Introducing ROS-RealSense: 3D empowered Robotics Innovation Platform" - Amit Moran (Intel), Gila Kamhi (Intel)
  • "ROS-driven user applications in idempotent environments" - Matt Vollrath (End Point), Wojciech Ziniewicz (End Point)
  • "ROS2 on "small" embedded systems" - Morgan Quigley (OSRF)
  • "ROS + Docker: Enabling Repeatable, Reproducible, and Deployable robotic software via Linux Containers" - Ruffin White (Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines at Georgia Tech)
  • "ROS for education and applied research: practical experiences" - Ralph Seulin (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Raphael Duverne (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Olivier Morel (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Cansen Jiang (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Jeremie Deray (PAL Robotics), Jordi Pages (PAL Robotics), Lee Kian Seng (Universiti Teknologi Petronas), Remi Groslevin (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Cedric Demonceaux (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), David Fofi (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte), Yohan Fougerolle (CNRS - Univ. Bourgogne Franche-Comte)
  • "Maru and Toru: Item-specific logistics solutions based on ROS" - Moritz Tenorth (Magazino GmbH), Ulrich Klank (Magazino GmbH), Nikolas Engelhard (Magazino GmbH)
  • "Mapviz: An Extensible 2D Visualization Tool for Automated Vehicles" - Jerry Towler (SwRI), Marc Alban (SwRI)
  • "Docker-based ROS Build Farm" - Tully Foote (OSRF), Dirk Thomas (OSRF), Dejan Pangercic (Robert Bosch), Daniel Di Marco (Robert Bosch), Arne Hamann (Robert Bosch)

ROS Driver for the IFM Efector O3D303

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Cross posted from: Ros-Industrial


Love Park Robotics has announced a ROS driver for the new IFM Efector O3D303 3D camera system. This sensor was officially released in Germany on April 13, 2015. The O3D303 is a time-of-flight sensor, specifically designed for use in industrial environments and automation applications. The 176x132 element detector features a relative accuracy of +/-4mm. In addition to the robust design, it is able to operate in illumination conditions ranging from complete darkness to sunlight. It is also affordable, at a per-unit cost of $1250 USD. A picture of the O3D303 is shown below along with a point cloud of an imaged pallet (taken in an office environment) to highlight the quality of the sensor data.

o3d303.png
pallet.png

As part of our beta test period, Love Park Robotics developed a software interface to the O3D303 that allows us to utilize the sensor within software frameworks such as PCL, OpenCV, and ROS. This code has been made available as open-source on Github in the following repositories: libo3d3xx and o3d3xx-ros. Additionally, we are working with the ROS Industrial community to make binary debian packages available as part of the core ROS and ROS-I distributions.

For more information see the ROS Industrial Blog Post

ROS Summer School 2015

July 23-26

East China Normal University, Shanghai, China


Since 2012, many college students, researchers and engineers have been learning ROS (Robot Operating System) for their robotics projects when the robustness and maintainability of ROS keeps improving. Since 2013, many robotics companies in China have realized the importance of ROS, started recruiting ROS developers and integrating ROS into their robotic products. However, learning ROS framework and its associating components involves a very wide range of knowledge, which not only requires developers to master software development skills, but also to be familiar with robot hardware and even the background of specific industrial applications.


For most people, learning and using ROS is a slow and painful process. Our ROS Summer Schools 2015 (organized by Intelligent Robot Motion and Vision Laboratory, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China) provides a quick and in-depth learning opportunity for ROS beginners and advanced ROS users.

In the first day, some robotics companies are invited to present their profiles, how they use ROS in their products and recent developments of robot industry in China. In the second day, we start with some introductory ROS courses for beginners. In the third day, we tackle the main tasks of integrating ROS with mobile autonomous robots, i.e. perception, localization and navigation. In the fourth day, we continue some advanced topics and skills interesting to many advanced ROS users.


This ROS Summer School also includes some leisure activities, such as sharing the start-up experience, companies and job seekers discussion, etc. Every day, attendees have a chance to win prizes, including ROVIO robots, iRobot Create, Asus Xtion Pro Live RGB-D camera, iRobot Roomba Vacuum Cleaning Robot. For how to win a prize and registration, please visit our official website for the details.

http://www.robotics.sei.ecnu.edu.cn/ros2015


Reminder: ROSCon CFP closes on July 7th

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This is a friendly reminder that the ROSCon call for proposals is open until July 7th. ROSCon talks are a great opportunity to share your work with the community. Submit your proposals at: http://roscon.ros.org/review

Full text of the CFP is below.

Also if you're planning to attend, registration is also open: https://events.osrfoundation.org/?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fevent%2Fregister&id=3&reset=1 And if you're in the US a few people have pointed out that this week United is having a sale on flights to Europe in the fall. Details are at: http://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/content/deals/offers/Pages/LowFarestoEurope.aspx


ROSCon 2015 Call for Proposals

Presentations and tutorials on all topics related to ROS are invited. Examples include introducing attendees to a ROS package or library, exploring how to use tools, manipulating sensor data, and applications for robots.

Proposals will be reviewed by a program committee that will evaluate fit, impact, and balance.

We cannot offer sessions that are not proposed! If there is a topic on which you would like to present, please propose it. If you have an idea for an important topic that you do not want to present yourself, please post it to ros-users@lists.ros.org.

Topic areas

All ROS-related work is invited. Topics of interest include:

  • Best practices
  • Useful packages and stacks
  • Robot-specific development
  • ROS Enhancement Proposals (REPs)
  • Safety and security
  • ROS in embedded systems
  • Product development & commercialization
  • Research and education
  • Enterprise deployment
  • Community organization and direction
  • Testing, quality, and documentation
  • Robotics competitions and collaborations

Proposal submission

A session proposal should include:

  • Title
  • Recommended duration: Short (~20 minutes) or Long (~45 minutes)
  • Summary, 100 word max (to be used in advertising the session)
  • Description (for review purposes): outline, goals (what will the audience learn?), pointers to packages to be discussed (500 Words Maximum)

Find this blog and more at planet.ros.org.


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This page is an archive of entries from July 2015 listed from newest to oldest.

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