ROS 2

ROS 2 (Robot Operating System 2) isn't really an operating system — it's a publish/subscribe message bus, a set of conventions, and a large ecosystem of pre-built components for sensor drivers, controllers, planners, and visualization. Most production and research robots use ROS 2 to glue parts together.

Core concepts:

• Nodes — processes that publish or subscribe to topics.
• Topics — named streams of typed messages (e.g. /camera/image_raw carrying sensor_msgs/Image).
• Services — request/response RPCs between nodes.
• Actions — long-running operations with progress feedback.

The "2" matters: ROS 1 is end-of-life as of 2025; ROS 2 has real-time-friendly DDS messaging and proper multi-machine support. Current LTS is Jazzy Jalisco (released May 2024).

You don't need ROS for learning research — most simulator-based work uses Python directly. You'll touch ROS when you start integrating real hardware.