AiVibeRobot Operating System (ROS)
The Robot Operating System (ROS) is an open-source collection of software libraries, tools and communication middleware for building robot applications; despite its name, it runs on top of a conventional operating system rather than replacing one.
A ROS application is split into nodes, processes that exchange data through publish-subscribe topics, request-response services and longer-running actions. ROS 2, the current generation, uses the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard as its default communication layer through a pluggable middleware interface, which adds quality-of-service settings and better support for real-time and multi-robot systems. Packages provide drivers, transforms between coordinate frames, visualisation and logging.
ROS is widely used in research and mobile robotics and appears in a growing number of industrial products. Well-known packages include MoveIt for manipulator motion planning and Nav2 for mobile robot navigation, and the Gazebo simulator integrates closely with it. ROS-Industrial is an open-source project that extends ROS to manufacturing hardware and applications.
ROS is not a safety-rated system; safety functions remain with certified controllers and safety devices. Production use requires attention to distribution support periods, dependency management, security configuration and real-time behaviour, and teams typically standardise on a long-term support release and test updates before deployment.
Key points
- Open-source middleware, libraries and tools, not an operating system itself
- Nodes communicate through topics, services and actions
- ROS 2 uses the DDS standard as its default communication layer
- MoveIt and Nav2 are widely used motion planning and navigation packages
Where AiVibe comes in
AiVibe designs and manufactures the AiAmbA AI Factory, whose edge devices and AI agents let people talk to robot controllers in plain language. Robotics perception is an AiAmbA use case, and robot safety functions follow ISO 10218 and never depend on the AI layer.