The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) will participate in the upcoming ROS-Industrial Training Class, June 4-6. OSRF will provide training for the new features and capabilities of the ROS Groovy release, particularly focusing on Catkin, the new software build system. OSRF will be available to respond to questions you may have about the ROS core, past, present, and future. The class will provide a hands-on introduction to ROS and ROS-Industrial, and it will culminate with hardware integration exercises with live industrial robots and peripherals. The class is FREE to Full/Associate Members of the ROS-Industrial Consortium. Others may attend for a fee.

Please note that class registration is only open until May 18th. We also encourage attendees to buy a small form factor PC to take home after the class. The PC will have Ubuntu, ROS, and ROS-I preinstalled, allowing developers to hit the ground running with ROS-I development. We are selling the PCs at cost; the first ten buyers will receive them at the sale price that we negotiated. Later units are subject to price change.

As the Lead User Experience (UX) Designer at OSRF, I’m very excited to see more users contributing their time and effort to improving the ROS and Gazebo software. As these communities continue to grow, it becomes even more important to consider the usability of ROS and Gazebo, along with the related documentation. By designing user-friendly software and support documents, we make our work more accessible to the broader robotics community, and encourage more novice users to hop on the ROS/Gazebo bandwagon. Addressing usability in our work and designing with our users’ best interests at heart becomes even more critical as society as a whole begins interacting more with robots. Robots and robot software no longer exist exclusively in research labs. They’re working next to people in manufacturing environments, enabling people with paralysis to walk , and helping educate children in schools . Robots are becoming ubiquitous, and as this happens, our work on ROS and Gazebo helps shape the future of robotics and the integration of robots into everyday life. By identifying and designing for our users’ needs, we help advance the state of robotics by making robots more useful, usable and enjoyable to use.

At OSRF, I conduct as many usability testing sessions as we can manage given our project timelines. While we would always benefit from more, the testing we do have time for yields excellent feedback that helps us produce new features with more usable layout, interactions and functionality. While it certainly helps to have a UX Designer such as myself on the payroll, anyone can do usability testing. To encourage all of you, I’ve added a Usability Resources page to our wiki. There, you’ll find information on usability studies, heuristic evaluation, hand-drawn prototypes, and more. Have a look around and give the methods a shot.

There are a lot of awesome robots and robot applications in our future, and with some dedication to making them accessible and usable, we can significantly impact how the general public perceives and interacts with the robots we put out into the world.

The user experience should be considered throughout the development of a product, not just before or after. (Credit: Based on Ben Melbourne’s image)

The many components of User Experience Design. (Credit: By Thomas Glaser, based on Dan Saffer’s work)

Gazebo Terrain Modification Tool paper prototype for user testing.

The synthesis phase of a full-fledged iteratively-designed project. (Credit: Paul Caravelli and John Horstman)

OSRF is pleased to welcome Dirk Thomas! Dirk has more than 6 years of professional software development experience. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 2010, which was concentrated on Robotics Middleware.

Dirk has been a successful RoboCuper since 2003 as part of the Darmstadt Dribbling Dackels in the Sony Aibo league as well as the Humanoid Kidsize team Darmstadt Dribblers. Before joining OSRF, Dirk worked at Willow Garage leading the development of the new build system in ROS during the Groovy release, developing the framework for Qt-based graphical ROS tools rqt and maintaining the core ROS packages. Dirk is excited to join OSRF and will be working on the next generation of ROS as well as improving the supporting infrastructure.

OSRF folks know that students love Open Source software, Robotics and flip flops. Do you want to spend your summer doing real-world software development, contributing to robotics projects like Gazebo, ROS, and CloudSim, and engaging with the global robotics community, all while getting paid? Then check out our GSoC 2013 site. You’ll also want to read through our ideas page, which lists projects that we’re interested in. Feel free to ask questions and propose suggestions at gsoc2013@localhost. The student application period starts April 22nd. Get ready for a robotics coding summer!.

OSRF is pleased to welcome Tully Foote! Tully has been a core ROS developer for many years, and he is looking forward to continuing that work. Tully attended Caltech and UPenn earning his BS and MS while working on all three of the the DARPA Grand Challenges. He most recently has been working on ROS at Willow Garage as well as many other projects including designing the TurtleBot.

OSRF is pleased to welcome Paul Mathieu! Paul is a software engineering intern with the ROS Team and works on bringing binary support for ROS on ARM platforms. He recently obtained a MSc. in Robotics at the University of Tokyo where he was working on indoor navigation of a quadrotor UAV with an on-board depth camera, and a MSc. in Aerospace Engineering from Supaero (France). Recently arrived from France, he enjoys California’s lifestyle and clement weather.

OSRF is pleased to welcome William Woodall! William is a Software Engineer and a robotics enthusiast. He joined the Open Source Robotics Foundation as a member of the ROS development team in February of 2013. Before that he worked at Willow Garage on general ROS development and supporting internal Willow Garage projects. Before that, he built an awesome autonomous lawnmower. He will apply his software engineering and design skills to improve the state of open source robotics at OSRF.

We’re pleased to announce that the ROS project will soon be hosted by Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab (OSL). The OSL provides services to many open source communities. We are pleased to join the ranks of projects like Drupal and kernel.org. We’d like to thank Willow Garage for providing hosting and infrastructure for the entire ROS community for over 5 years.

We’d also like to thank Lance Albertson, Carlos Jensen, and Bill Smart for welcoming us to the OSL. We look forward to working with Oregon State and the OSL to provide ongoing hosting as well as exploring ways to improve ROS infrastructure for the greater community.

In the coming weeks, we’ll migrate the wiki, ROS Answers, and the Ubuntu package repository from Willow Garage to the OSL. We’ll announce more detailed plans as they come together and we’ll do our best to minimize disruptions during the migration.

As you might imagine, hosting for these critical services, which are heavily used around the world and around the clock, costs money. We need your help! A big thank you to the ROS-Industrial Consortium, which has stepped up to support part of this cost. If your organization can financially support ROS project hosting, please contact us at info@localhost.

Tully and Melonee were recently interviewed about their creation, the TurtleBot. Congratulations to both for the impact they’ve had on the entire community!