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Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

henkirobotics.com

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Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#71

Post by stackghost »

margalabargala wrote: post #8

While it's used in industry sometimes, ROS is really one of those by-and-for-academia tools. There's a reason it's near-universally reviled, and why "migrate off of ROS" is a standing goal at a lot of robotics companies. There's also a reason why it's a standing goal, rather than a completed goal. It does little or nothing really well, but it does everything kind of okay. There's a lot of "alternatives", most of whic…

Tangentially relevant: the TryHackMe Advent of Cyber side quest this year[0] featured a pair of ROS nodes that we had to attack.

I had never encountered ROS before but, having scoured the documentation to figure out how to write a malicious node[1] and exfil data via `rostopic`, it sure felt great not to have to use ROS professionally, and to know I was probably never going to encounter it again.

[0] https://tryhackme.com/r/room/adventofcyber24sidequest

[1] https://0x85.org/sidequest2024-2.html

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#72

Post by f1shy »

ModernMech wrote: post #65
f1shy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a CS PhD? I highly doubt you can learn something there. If it is about knowledge, find out what books are used in the masters. With a PhD you must be able to learn yourself

Robotics is very different from CS. At CMU robotics is huge and consists of thousands of researchers, with dozens of classes a MS student would have never encountered during their CS PhD or undergrad. It's true you can learn robotics from books, but CMU or any grad program has access to robotics hardware resources you can't find online or in the library. For example I took a course there that had the Aldebaran Nao as…

About the theory, you can learn yourself (I think) about practice, well, you may learn 1 or 2 platforms, but not all. If you get a job, you will for sure have to learn a lot from the platform they use, but much more of the application they do. Also the platforms get obsolete fast…

What about buy 2nd hand/use/resell some hardware? I do not know how much cost a Ms in CMU, but sure does bot even compare to 20k.

Sorry maybe I’m a little bit negative, but if you have already one good title, that is more than enough. The problem is I fully subscribe to Stallone[0]

[0] https://m.youtube.com/shorts/srEsT5h4gdo

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#73

Post by doganulus »

The ROS project has terrible governance, and the community suffers heavily from groupthink.

I just got banned from their forum for questioning what the ROS Foundation has done in the past two years--specifically on the build system. Yes, their middleware is unforgiving of alternative ways other than their wrong and outdated development practices, but their community is more religiously attached to their precious tools for development.

This is the post I wrote: https://discourse.ros.org/t/build-systems-package-management...

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#74

Post by f1shy »

exe34 wrote: post #9
f1shy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I was, 1 was standard, 2 experimental and nothing worked really. Slowly a half assed, bug ridden internal implementation of ROS 2 was started… a sh*tshow to be honest. The discontinuity between R1 and R2 was for me just unacceptable, unprofessional and just awful. If I could decide (and in the area where I am, we did) I would ditch the whole thing. After all, if you squint, ROS is a collection of things: - a la…

hi, I've dabbled in robotics from a hobbyist perspective, and I've gotten as far as installing ROS and following some tutorial and online courses a few times. I agree with what you said about launcher/ipc/config - my plan if I ever use Ros is to keep it in a box and use my own communication layer to connect with things in various environments (rather than trying to solve incompatible conda environments). however one…

You said it much better “ launcher/ipc/config”

My suggestion: start with ROS, but make absolutely sure to separate ROS from your “business intelligence“. The one think I hate from ROS, is that it makes it difficult. But keep them separated. Also the launch IPC and config parts, don’t do them dependent from each other. If possible do not rely on launcher. So later you can switch away if needed. And you will need. ROS is great for prototyping, changing things, development. But is just not for deploying in production. The whole possibility of inspecting the messages between nodes, means you have to pay a price.

> in your opinion, are these at least well implemented? would they be easy to rip out and run separately?

Not a simple answer: - from the architecture pov i think many questionable decisions were made: you need to master many languages: XML, launch, message files, yaml, python or C, Cmakefiles for catkin… why?! Why not making launcher files, messages all just yaml or json? Just too complex for nothing. - The code, you can look yourself, is write only. No way you can change anything without needing 1 year understanding… - BUT: it does work, and works well. I’ve not found a kill bug or something. So, I guess is ok.

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#75

Post by adeptima »

syntaxing wrote: post #33
adeptima wrote: post #21

Had a recent conversation with nephew about his robotics study, and it seems he’s overwhelmed with ROS, OpenCV, Python, AI transformers tutorial hell. Told him we should go together to industrial expo - starting from 3d printing, molding, material science and robotics and spend some time together to hack into hard core C++ SDKs used by big tech like Nvidia and Co, and look how to developed linear algebra and statisti…

"3d printing, molding, material science and robotics " sounds like a Mechanical Engineering degree. I'm serious, I learned everything you're talking about and more. Probably hubris, but I'm pretty sure I'm well equipped to start a hardware company if I really wanted to (Not sure what business manufacturing means though, as in he wants to start an "Integrator" company or a contract manufacturing company?). As for an E…

Noted on ATX West show. Thank you!

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#76

Post by adeptima »

corysama wrote: post #38
adeptima wrote: post #21

Had a recent conversation with nephew about his robotics study, and it seems he’s overwhelmed with ROS, OpenCV, Python, AI transformers tutorial hell. Told him we should go together to industrial expo - starting from 3d printing, molding, material science and robotics and spend some time together to hack into hard core C++ SDKs used by big tech like Nvidia and Co, and look how to developed linear algebra and statisti…

Show him the work being done by Hadrian for inspiration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cbayQAuvvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye7m8VjKcrE That “S3” channel has a lot of great content about physical tech startups. 3Blue1Brown and Khan Academy are great places to learn math of all sorts.

Thnx for input! Will check video!

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#77

Post by exe34 »

f1shy wrote: post #74
exe34 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi, I've dabbled in robotics from a hobbyist perspective, and I've gotten as far as installing ROS and following some tutorial and online courses a few times. I agree with what you said about launcher/ipc/config - my plan if I ever use Ros is to keep it in a box and use my own communication layer to connect with things in various environments (rather than trying to solve incompatible conda environments). however one…

You said it much better “ launcher/ipc/config” My suggestion: start with ROS, but make absolutely sure to separate ROS from your “business intelligence“. The one think I hate from ROS, is that it makes it difficult. But keep them separated. Also the launch IPC and config parts, don’t do them dependent from each other. If possible do not rely on launcher. So later you can switch away if needed. And you will need. ROS…

thank you!

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#78

Post by adeptima »

spieswl wrote: post #26
adeptima wrote: post #21

Had a recent conversation with nephew about his robotics study, and it seems he’s overwhelmed with ROS, OpenCV, Python, AI transformers tutorial hell. Told him we should go together to industrial expo - starting from 3d printing, molding, material science and robotics and spend some time together to hack into hard core C++ SDKs used by big tech like Nvidia and Co, and look how to developed linear algebra and statisti…

It sounds like your nephew has a project in mind. Start there with the basic dependencies and that will start laying out a competency roadmap which looks a lot like a curriculum. Quick aside: Automate small/mid business manufacturing? Admirable, but will probably choke on the scale problem, so I think the journey will be vastly more interesting than the destination...which is good! Turns out there's a lot of robotics…

Wow, great roadmap! Will decomposition more. Thank you

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#79

Post by adeptima »

puffybunion wrote: post #23
adeptima wrote: post #21

Had a recent conversation with nephew about his robotics study, and it seems he’s overwhelmed with ROS, OpenCV, Python, AI transformers tutorial hell. Told him we should go together to industrial expo - starting from 3d printing, molding, material science and robotics and spend some time together to hack into hard core C++ SDKs used by big tech like Nvidia and Co, and look how to developed linear algebra and statisti…

Can someone that hasn't achieved Steve Jobs' accomplishments show you the way to them? Perhaps you should gift him a biography about Steve Jobs.

I knew the guy who worked with Jobs and hated him with passion.

Let's keep the useful image parts.

“How many of you are from manufacturing companies?”

[Some hands go up.]

“Oh, excellent. Where are the rest of you from? Okay, so how many are from consulting?”

[A number of hands go up.]

“Oh, that’s bad. Yeah, the mind is too important to waste—you should do something.”

“I think that without owning something over an extended period of time—like a few years—where one has a chance to take responsibility for one’s recommendations, where one has to see those recommendations through all action stages, accumulate scar tissue for the mistakes, pick oneself up off the ground, and dust oneself off, one learns only a fraction of what one can.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk-9Fd2mEnI&t=184s

Re: Robotics and ROS 2 Essentials

#80

Post by exe34 »

puffybunion wrote: post #23
adeptima wrote: post #21

Had a recent conversation with nephew about his robotics study, and it seems he’s overwhelmed with ROS, OpenCV, Python, AI transformers tutorial hell. Told him we should go together to industrial expo - starting from 3d printing, molding, material science and robotics and spend some time together to hack into hard core C++ SDKs used by big tech like Nvidia and Co, and look how to developed linear algebra and statisti…

Can someone that hasn't achieved Steve Jobs' accomplishments show you the way to them? Perhaps you should gift him a biography about Steve Jobs.

I don't think a lot of Olympics gold medalists are taught by former Olympics gold medalists. Most teachers never go on to accomplish what their students achieve. I think OP has a fair chance of giving the nephew a great start - and whether that leads to Jobs level of accomplishments will depend on perseverance and luck.
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