Introduction to ROS Part 1: What is the Robot Operating System? | DigiKey

Welcome to the first episode in our ROS 2 tutorial series for beginners! In this video, we introduce the Robot Operating System (ROS), an open-source middleware framework that helps developers build complex and scalable robotic applications. Whether you're working on autonomous vehicles, robotic arms, or hobbyist bots, ROS provides the tools, libraries, and communication infrastructure you need to get started. The written guide for this episode can be found here: https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/intro-to-ros-part-1-what-is-the-robot-operating-system-ros/f4742e1cc4354d799a7df92ce33ad49c The GitHub repository containing the Docker image and example code for this series can be found here: https://github.com/ShawnHymel/introduction-to-ros This 12-part course will walk you through everything from basic ROS 2 concepts to writing your own nodes, services, and interfaces. We’ll also cover advanced topics like TF2 transformations and microcontroller integration. By the end of the series, you should have a good understanding of how to build ROS applications using nodes, topics, services, parameters, and launch files. For a bit of history, ROS started as a Stanford project and was later developed by Willow Garage. It grew into the standard for robotic middleware and is now maintained by Open Robotics. With ROS 1 reaching end-of-life, this series focuses exclusively on ROS 2 (Jazzy Jalisco), the latest long-term support version. While ROS 1 was a game-changer for research and prototyping, ROS 2 brings much-needed upgrades for commercial and industrial robotics. In this episode, we explore key differences between ROS 1 and ROS 2, the advantages of using a decentralized messaging system (DDS), and why ROS 2 is now the standard for new projects. You'll also learn about the officially supported programming languages, Python and C++, and when to use each one.