open-source-rover VS ROS

Naonosaur: https://github.com/rnanosaur/nanosaur. If you would like something larger and with a bit more off the shelf components then jpl open source rover has seem quite a bit of updates recently: https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover

"Our position is that the license chosen overrides the disclaimer. We have approval to license this software under the Apache License, version 2, which allows others to do what they wish (even build commercial software on it). That should supersede the attached disclaimer which are artifacts of an evolving OSS release process that we are trying to improve."

https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover/issues/2

How much money do you have? https://opensourcerover.jpl.nasa.gov/

Another way to go if you wanted to go from scratch is the official nasa rover build https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover which I've only heard good things about

https://kitspace.org

Kitspace is a place to share ready to order open hardware electronics projects. You can order the the circuit board and all components for a project with just a few clicks.

I’m seeking a someone to help improve the documentation of open source hardware electronics projects by asking creators whether they would like to mirror their project to Kitspace.

The way to do this is to send Github pull-requests to projects (some examples: https://github.com/Ottercast/OtterCastAudioV2/pull/8, https://github.com/gregdavill/d20-hardware/pull/2 and https://github.com/nasa-jpl/open-source-rover/pull/180). As you can see in the examples it requires clear communication and some familiarity with electronics parts and making bills of materials. Most importantly it requires a mindset to try and help and improve the project in question through documentation rather than badgering people to add it to the site. Familiarity with Git, Github and at least one electronics CAD software (KiCad, Eagle etc.) is also helpful.

Naturally this gig is fully remote and the number of hours and length of contract you would like to commit to is up to you. Time zone is not dictated either, though some overlap with UTC+1, for the occasional meeting, would be ideal.

This is a fully open source project and does not turn a profit hence the budget is limited. I’m looking for people that can accept a rate of USD $20 an hour.

Please send applications, including a CV, via email to [email protected]. If you have any questions feel free to ask on this forum below or via email or private message.

I wonder if this could be related to M1/2/3 Macs being worse for x86 system software development than the old Intel Macs. I work on ROS[1] which runs on x86 Linux platforms, but usually develop on a Mac. I may have to move to a Linux laptop soon because there's not an easy path (that I'm aware of) to running x86 ROS code on an M3: compiling the entire system for arm would be a huge headache while running x86 code in a Linux VM under Rosetta has a lot of unknowns.

Obviously my case is a bit of an outlier, but once you add up enough outliers you might see a real impact.

[1] https://www.ros.org

Robotics is a broad field and is a confluence of many specialties: mechanical engineering, hardware engineering, software engineering, control, machine learning, computer vision, anything in between is a good entrance.

Coming from software, if you are interested, I would suggest either:

- Backend platform development (Python, C++ as main programming languages with a strong focus on ROS[1]).

- Frontend development (nothing too different from what's out there).

As small projects I would suggest playing with ROS to learn it and getting a running simulation with a simple robot that you can teleoperate, most of the stack already exists, it's just connecting everything together [2].

Another venue is open source contribution [1] to get known within the community and potentially attract interest from companies. ROS has multiple packages, from cloud infrastructure to drivers and simulation, if you see anything there you could contribute to, they will gladly take contributions.

In general robotics greatly benefits of good technologies from other areas, if there is a tool we use you believe could be better or a lack of good tooling in a specific area, it will get noticed.

So this would be my suggested path: learn C++/Python if you're not familiar with, learn ROS and watch which specialties appear more often in robot related jos posts [3]. If you are really invested, maybe go to a robotics conference as ROSCon to meet other enthusiasts, which companies are engaged with the community, etc.

Good luck!

Note: not everything robot related is done in ROS, but it's almost a standard within the field save for a few exceptions.

[1]: https://www.ros.org/

ROS is an operating system designed for robotics (it can be run many different ways) it includes simulations for many robots (including sensors etc) and you can even design your own fully inside the software. https://www.ros.org/

Robotics with ROS https://www.ros.org/ (You can do a lot with simulators and don't require actual HW)

Hardware experience is useful, but not needed to get started working with robotics. With your software background, I recommend you look into learning ROS (Robot Operating System) fundamentals on a personal computer, you can simulate a robot using Gazebo. Good luck!

In Robotics, the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL) is a popular library for multi-dimensional motion planning, and is used by ROS and other robotics-related software. There are no Rust bindings to OMPL (though there is Rust support for software like ROS), and the library is written almost exclusively in C++. There are Python bindings, but those are generated using Py++. The header files throughout OMPL are C++ header files, not C, as they contain namespaces, classes, etc.

[3] https://www.ros.org/

ALSO - learn ROS. If you are interested in robotics as a career, this is one of the better things to have good experience for on your resume. There are also good tutorials on using ROS with simulated robots, so if you just want to focus on the software that's a good option :)

Roboticist here, have you heard of ROS?