ROS is a good research platform, but when it comes down to brass tacks, people stick with smaller, simpler systems. I've used NASA CoreFlight professionally and

ROS is a good research platform, but when it comes down to brass tacks, people stick with smaller, simpler systems. I've used NASA CoreFlight professionally and while it doesn't have all the nice creature comforts, I'm much happier in a small, clean, C-only codebase that runs on Linux, VxWorks, and RTEMS, with two layers of abstraction at most.