The Robot Operating System (ROS)

The Robot Operating System is, as mentioned in my last article, an Operating System for nearly every kind of device in the Robotics. It can be applied on a Robot itself for controlling purposes, but also as a System for pure data collection in a car. It is super slim, so it can be used on low-powered devices like a Raspberry Pi or a Rock64.

What Are Messages, Topics and Nodes?

In order to understand this blogpost properly, I’ll briefly explain ROS nodes, messages and topics.

A node is able to process different tasks. For example you can have a node for calculating a current position out of acceleration measurements or, in this case, to proceed an IOTA transaction. Furthermore, a node is able to communicate with others by subscribing or publishing to a specific ‘’topic’’. A ‘’topic’’ is needed for nodes that they can get data for calculations or to provide data for other nodes. It’s like a noticeboard. If you need data, you can look which data is provided in a topic or you can leave a note for others so that everyone (every node) who is interested will be able to get the information you have left.