The State of Robotics – July 2020

We know a lot of you are on vacation so we’ll keep this month’s State of Robotics edition short and sweet.

Try out the Hello World of ROS

Looking for an easy way to get familiar with ROS 2? We recently published a few helpers on how to simulate robots with turtlesim to help our readers get a rolling start on ROS2.

For something that carries a little more punch, follow our tutorial on simulating a TurtleBot3. TurtleBots not only have the standard array of sensors and actuators, they also work with tht ROS navigation and Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) packages.

Overall these packages can be an excellent way to learn more about autonomous robotics!

Get involved with the ROS security community

What does it mean to “secure a ROS robot”? Canonical is working with the Center for Internet Security (CIS) to address exactly that question.

CIS has a long and successful history of creating community-consensus best practice recommendations for security. The first CIS benchmark for ROS is currently under consideration and covers Melodic running on Ubuntu Server 18.04.

Want to get involved? You don’t need to be an expert in security or in robotics. We’d love to have your help to define the recommendations for ROS. Send us your insights on common sense security settings that prevent abuse of robots in the field. 

Join the call to define the industry best security practices for the next generation of robots.

Robotics Rewind

The Ubuntu Robotics team has been busy working to make robotics more approachable and stable on Ubuntu, and sharing all the work with the community.

Recent initiatives include getting up and running with ROS 2, software development for ROS and building snaps for your robot. We’ve published over two dozen articles & videos on these topics, so in case you may have missed them, take a look at our recent recap.

Remembering Grant Imahara

On a more somber note, Grant Imahara – a beloved icon of the robotics community – passed away from brain aneurysm this July. Imahara was 49. And 2020 just won’t take a breather.

An avid roboticist, Imahara was most famous for being the energetic host of MythBusters and the operator of R2D2 in the Star Wars prequels. Here is a tribute that the folks over at Discovery made for Grant and all his contributions to the robotics community. 

Outro

For all the makers and hackers out there, if you have an open-source project or initiative you’d like us to showcase in this monthly series, shoot us a message on robotics.canonical@canonical.com. We’ll take it from there.

That’s it folks, enjoy your downtime and stay safe in August!