The contribution of micro-ROS goes beyond the integration and portability of ROS-based software to microcontrollers. This is where FIWARE comes into play. The FIWARE micro-ROS adapter makes robots interoperable with heterogeneous services, sensors, and devices from the IoT world. By sharing rich context information with a wide range of IoT solutions, robots become smarter and can better adapt to their environments. The result: the enablement of truly distributed robotic systems to interact even more intelligently with the world around them.

To learn more about design alternatives for the interoperability of FIROS2 (which is a ROS2 integrable tool focused on the intercommunication between ROS 2 and FIWARE) with micro-ROS, such as direct integration, indirect integration with a single FIROS2 node, and indirect integration with multiple FIROS2 nodes, click here.

eProsima Micro XRCE-DDS

FIWARE Foundation Gold Member and project partner eProsima has created the Micro XRCE-DDS, an Open Source wire protocol that implements the OMG DDS for eXtremely Resource-Constrained Environment standard (DDS-XRCE). The aim of the DDS-XRCE protocol is to provide access to the DDS Global Data Space from resource-constrained devices. The client-server architecture helps accommodate this. Here, low-resource devices (XRCE Clients) are connected to a server (XRCE Agent), which acts on behalf of its clients in the DDS Global Data Space.

Composed of two main elements; Micro XRCE-DDS Agent (a C++11 out-of-the-box application) and Micro XRCE-DDS Client (aC99 library), and using two additional components; Micro CDR (a de/serialization engine) and Micro XRCE-DDS Gen (a code generator tool), Micro XRCE-DDS is focused on microcontroller applications which require a publisher/subscriber architecture. To learn more about its main features, such as low resource consumption, multi-transport support, and multi-platform support, click here.

The Use of DDS Middleware in Robotics

Keen to know more? We are running a series of webinars on the development of FIWARE NGSI Robotics Interfaces and how FIWARE enablers accelerate the implementation of powerful smart robotics applications. Following up on our previous webinars: ‘How to Get Context Data Out of Robots’ (click here to revisit the webinar) and ‘How to Develop FIWARE NGSI Interfaces for Robots’ (click here to revisit the webinar), we present a series of blog posts acting as an introduction to the micro-ROS world, including topics such as architecture, middleware, tutorials, and demo cases. This way, you will be up to speed for our next webinars that will dive deeper into core real-time technologies from the smallest robotic devices to agile manufacturing environments.

Our next Wednesday Webinar on Robotics, “The Use of DDS Middleware in Robotics“ will take place on 17 June from 10:00-11:00 (CEST). This webinar, in cooperation with eProsima, will provide an introduction to core real-time technologies: FAST DDS, the most complete Open Source DDS for ROS 2, and Micro XRCE-DDS, the middleware for microcontrollers and micro-ROS. Register for the upcoming webinar.