Madrid, March 2022
OFERA, the EU funded project that successfully created micro-ROS, has come to an end, but micro-ROS lives on to continue bringing ROS 2 into the embedded world. Find in this article the story and all you need to know about OFERA.
The OFERA project was an EU funded project focused on creating an extension of ROS 2 for microcontrollers: micro-ROS.
This project received funding from the European Union‘s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 780785. The project started in Jan 2018 and ended in Dec 2021.
OFERA MISSION
To bridge the gap between MCUs and larger processors by micro-ROS:
- Seamless integration of MCUs with ROS 2
- Ease portability of ROS 2 code to MCUs
- Ensure long-term maintenance of micro-ROS stack
Given the trends in robotics of interconnected networks of sensors and actuators, OFERA intended to cover the existing lack of common standard framework for microcontrollers in robotics. OFERA effort was focused on developing from scratch a full standard stack that is totally interoperable with ROS 2 to bring the embedded world into the ROS 2 ecosystem.
During four years, the European partners have worked collaboratively and contributed to generate a community around micro-ROS. A full architecture was designed and implemented and fully featured ROS 2 capabilities. Also, an extended set of high quality collateral of tutorials, demos and examples have been created at https://micro.ros.org/.
To overcome the difficult circumstances due to Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions in 2020, the project was extended one extra year, in which micro-ROS maturity jumped successfully into a professional stage and reached commercialized platforms. Congratulations OFERA!
Today, micro-ROS lives on, it is acknowledged as the extension of ROS 2 for microcontrollers, it counts with a great community of users and has transitioned into a professional framework that helps the industry to accelerate robotic solutions based on CPUs and MCUs.
INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
- Successful reach to market
Microcontrollers are no longer inflexible back boxes. The combination of ROS 2 and micro-ROS results in a full-stack robotic framework that lowers the market entry barriers by saving costs and accelerating robot development.
- Enhanced ROS 2 ecosystem
Micro-ROS framework widens the scenarios to use ROS 2 in multisensor networks and edge-robotics, since it overcomes the past existing challenges for adopting critical systems. The Embedded Working Group is currently the largest ROS 2 group
OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY IMPACT
- Currently, micro-ROS counts with a continuously growing strong community
OFERA EU PARTNERS
OFERA Partners have received an outstanding review from the European Commission due to the maturity acquired of the micro-ROS framework and the impact drawn in the industry, covering an existing gap and helping companies to extend the use of embedded components in Robotic systems.
eProsima (Spain), Bosch (Germany), Fiware (Germany), PIAP (Poland)
