We are working on using ROS-Industrial on mobile industrial robots. I think there is a large demand on autonomous navigation for industrial applications. However, the navigation stack is currently not part of ROS-Industrial. I think the navigation stack is an ideal candidate to be situated similar to MoveIt and the interface and controller layer. Why is the Navigation stack not in ROS-Industrial?
No responses yet, but I would still like to know what others think about this topic. I have a related question about the organisation of ROS Industrial. Who decides which packages are (become) part of ROS Industrial? Moreover, who decides whether a package is experimental, developmental or production ready?
I would say I have an interest in mobility for industrial applications. There were a number of use cases where real value proposition could have been realized if we had access to high performing processing that was mobile. When we talk about high mix environments, the agility in the mobile approach is really appealing. Over at rosindustrial.org I wrote up a summary of the latest ROS-I to MTConnect work, https://rosindustrial.org/news/2018/9/28/imts-2018-leveraging-open-standards-and-technologies-to-re-imagine-interoperability-within-factories, that gives some insight to the value of mobile on-demand capability.
As far as the labeling, I replied to the “organization’s” take on that in another thread.
Thanks!
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Dear Matt,
Thank you for your response. We also see the agile navigation approach from ROS is appealing for industrial applications. Currently, we are working on applying ROS on industrial mobile robots. We combine a “normal” computer with ROS with an industrial real-time computer for the low level control. We have already demonstrated that the functionality can be realized this way. The next step is to determine how accurate this solution can be. I think that eventually, we should take (part of) the navigation stack to ROS Industrial, to make people aware that navigation is available.
I read the article on MT Connect. I have a “normal” software engineering background (Java, C#, Android etc.) and I am rather new to industrial applications. I was overwhelmed by the number of field bus / bus protocols in use and also the number of standards. To me, this really looks like a big bottleneck for interoperability en development of the whole field.
For the standards, some people pointed in the direction of OPC UA. In a recent (Dutch) article, they mentioned UPC UA TSN as the way to go. To my understanding, MT Connect is more focused on a higher level machine to machine communication and UPC UA TSN could also be used for low-latency and real-time communication. However, I am not sure if this is correct. Overall, do I see the potential of flexible and autonomous mobile robots or cobots servicing and tending a factory and an accepted standard for communication.