Description:
OFERA is a EU funded project of 4 years (Jan 2018 - Dec 2020, extended for one additional year until Dec 2021). The project’s goal is to bridge the technological gap between the established robotic software platforms for high-performance computational devices and the low-level libraries for microcontrollers.
By doing so, microprocessors and microcontrollers will be able to interoperate seamlessly in any robotic system. Through the end-user driven development of this innovative platform, the project aims to substantially reduce the cost of initial investment in robotic systems and thus lower the entry barrier to this market for small and medium-sized companies.
micro-ROS:
In order to do so, the OFERA project is developing micro-ROS. micro-ROS is a robotic framework, designed to target embedded and deep embedded robot components with extremely constrained computational resources and memory limitations. This framework addresses devices with special characteristics: minimum Real-Time Operating System or no operating system (bare-metal), battery powered, wireless low bandwidth connections, and intermittent operation with sleep periods.
micro-ROS is compatible with the Robot Operating System (ROS 2), the de facto standard for robotic applications development, thus enabling the interoperability of traditional robots with IoT sensors and devices and creating truly distributed robotic systems using a common framework. To pursue this objective, micro-ROS has adopted an architecture compatible with that of ROS 2 which allows the seamless integration between micro-ROS based and ROS 2 based applications. The integration of existing ROS 2 concepts eases the inclusion of micro-ROS into the ROS 2 ecosystem and its adoption by existing communities.
The micro-ROS Docker image is now available to download here.
eProsima and OFERA:
eProsima is the coordinator of the OFERA project and also responsible for the middleware used in micro-ROS, called Micro XRCE-DDS. Micro XRCE-DDS is the implementation of a wire protocol for eXtremly Resource Constrained Environments, DDS-XRCE.
OFERA financing:
The OFERA project is funded by the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 780785. Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme with almost €80 billion of funding available for the period from 2014 to 2020.
OFERA consortium:
To ensure the successful outcome of this project, OFERA counts on the participation of several international partners: BOSCH, eProsima, FIWARE, PIAP and Acutronic Robotics are involved.
Acutronic Robotics left the consortium in 2019.
More Information about OFERA:
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