RDP 038: How to connect with ROS from non-ROS systems with Gonzalo Casas

This is Ricardo Tellez, from The Construct.
Today, I would like to dedicate the podcast to all those ROS developers that are installing again ROS in their computers, but they don’t have an Ubuntu machine. I’m sorry for you. There are versions for Mac and Windows, but still a pain.

That is why, the interview of today may be useful for you.

We are going to interview Gonzalo Casas Software engineer at Gramazio Kohler Research of ETH Zurich. There, Gonzalo has developed the ROSlibPy a library that allows to create Python programs that can connect to ROS without having to install ROS in your system. It is very useful to interact from Linux, Windows or Mac machines with ROS robots

Selected quote:
“ROSlibPy allows non roboticists to interface with ROS based robots”

Gonzalo Casas

Related links:
Follow Gonzalo on LinkedIn
The ROSlibPy library
COMPAS FAB: A robotic fabrication library for the COMPAS framework for collaboration and research in architecture, engineering and digital fabrication. COMPAS FAB build on top of roslibpy to provide ROS access from within a CAD / 3D modelling environment.

Github: https://github.com/gramaziokohler/compas_fab

Docs: https://gramaziokohler.github.io/compas_fab/latest/

Robotics in Architecture: here’s an example of what we do at the architecture research labs in ETH, this video shows an end-to-end process from the pre-fabrication using our robots at the lab, to the montage and construction on site, and the final building completed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LwBMiokLxo (coincidentally, this building is being inaugurated today: http://www.dfab.ch/uncategorized/building-digitally-living-digitally/)

Workshop: we recently published a workshop for robotic assembly on github that uses compas_fab and by extension roslibpy. This workshop shows a bit the whole setup we use, including docker networks with complete ROS environments, integration with robot simulator (in our case ABB’s RobotStudio), and also a bunch of other tools used for design: https://github.com/gramaziokohler/robotic_assembly_workshop/

Grasshopper software
IronPython
Rosbridge
ROS Web Tools
MoveIt!
ROSduct
Previous episode of the ROS Developers Podcast interviewing to Sam Pfeiffer.
The Robot Ignite Academy, our online academy that teaches you ROS in 5 days, including ROS2
The ROS Development Studio, our online platform to program ROS online only with a browser
The ROS Developers Podcast full-length tune.
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