Steve Macenski is a Robot Operating System (ROS) Technical Steering Committee member, leader of the mobile robotics ecosystem in ROS, and UIUC Aerospace Engineering alumni. He will be giving a candid talk on the developments and use of ROS 2, which powers most modern robotics companies and research institutions globally. There will be plenty of time for discussion, Q&A about ROS or navigation, experience as a robotics leader in silicon valley, or any questions you may have about the industry.
This talk will be split into two sections: the first briefly outlining the new concepts introduced in the ROS 2. There are many new concepts to roboticists introduced in ROS 2 that are essential for all roboticists and robotics engineers to be aware of. ROS has been a prevailing force in academic research, commercialization, and education over the last decade. ROS 2 moving forward accelerates these trends but comes at the cost of requiring some technical competencies in DDS and other networking concepts, which we will review.
The second part of the talk will cover a detailed overview of the ROS 2 Navigation system known as Nav2, one of the main projects which our speaker leads. This will include a detailed look at its design, new algorithms available in the system, a novel behavior-tree based system for navigation architecture, demonstrations, and more. This is a good opportunity to pick the brain of a ROS core developer and creator of several commonly used software packages!
