Madrid, July 2023
eProsima is thrilled to announce the launch of Visual-ROS, a user-friendly web-based graphical interface for ROS 2 that allows users with little or no programming knowledge to develop ROS 2 applications.
Developed by eProsima as part of the EU-funded DIH2 project, Visual-ROS aims to democratize robotics by making ROS 2 accessible to everyone. This goal is in line with the mission of the DIH2 project, accelerating and streamlining the automation of the manufacturing industry for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) through robotics.
ROS 2 (Robot Operating System) is a popular framework for open-source robotics development, providing a solid platform for building complex robotic systems. However, beginners and non-programmers face the challenge of the steep learning curve associated with ROS 2, which relies heavily on coding and programming skills. Visual-ROS has been created as a solution to tackle this challenge.
This no-code tool is based on the Node-RED editor, an open-source browser-based graphical editor, that allows Visual-ROS users to generate ROS 2 applications using a visual interface by simply dragging and dropping custom nodes and connecting them to create application flows.
The core concept behind Visual-ROS is to simplify the deployment of ROS 2 entities. To do so, the tool translates the visual flows created in Node-RED into a language that ROS 2 APIs can understand. This translation is made possible through eProsima's Integration Service, which seamlessly connects the visual flows to the ROS 2 stack. This way the smooth communication between the graphical interface and ROS 2, allowing users to publish, subscribe and send topics in ROS 2 using Visual ROS graphical interface, in which Node-RED blocks are representations of the ROS 2 entities.
To demonstrate how Visual-ROS works, we showcase a real-world example in the video below. The demo shows how to control a robot simulation in Webots, the multi-platform desktop application for robot simulation by Cyberbotics. With Visual-ROS, controlling the Husarion ROSbot XL simulation is easy, as the graphical interface provides an intuitive way to interact with ROS 2 functionalities.
You can find access here the Visual-ROS repository and documentation. Try Visual-ROS today and start programming your ROS 2 applications no matter your programming level.
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