RNA, The ROS Node Automator: A Tool for ROS code generation

UWEETR-2015-0001

Author(s):
Danying Hu, Yangming Li, Mohammad Haghighipanah, Blake Hannaford

Keywords:
Robot operating system, ROS, robotics, robotics software, software, python

Abstract

We describe ``RNA" (ROS Node Automator), a software engineering tool, written in Python, to help generate source code templates in the Robotics Operating System, ROS. Before the user of ROS can concentrate on robotic functionality in their code they must generate a node which compiles. The precise sequence of includes/imports and object invocations depends on many variables including the package name and other information. Build configuration files must also be modified to support the new node. The RNA simplifies this process by collecting information from the user and generating a template node file (C++ or Python, rosbuild or catkin) such that the user can begin to add their semantics. The software source code is public on github.org and distributed under the LGPL license.

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