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People forget that ROS isn't really about the IPC or the build system or the networking. Ok it is about those things, but fundamentally it's about standardizat
by moffkalast 2y ago
People forget that ROS isn't really about the IPC or the build system or the networking.
Ok it is about those things, but fundamentally it's about standardization. Grab any lidar driver and it'll output a LaserScan. Every wheeled robot will send out Odometry, anything from a submarine to a flying drone to an agv will respond to a Twist message, every robot will have a central coordinate frame called "base_link", etc.
The cross ecosystem interoperability is frankly insane and the main perk of it all. It makes building things easy when you don't have to deal with writing adapters every single damn time. This is why ROS 2 is currently such a step backwards because it fragments the ecosystem in DDS compatibility, making sure that no two packages will necessarily be able to run concurrently.