Arduino's Portenta H7 Gets the Robot Operating System 2, Courtesy of micro-ROS
A Portenta-compatible build of micro-ROS is available now, but as with other Arduino-compatible builds is described as experimental.
The Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2), is now available for the Arduino Portenta H7, and its optional Vision Shield add-ons, in the form of the microcontroller-focused micro-ROS.
Designed to bridge the gap between low-resource microcontrollers and more powerful systems-on-chips running ROS 2, micro-ROS is built around the same architecture as ROS 2 — but with lightweight real-time operating systems (RTOSes) FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or NuttX used in place of the hungrier Linux kernel. Despite the differences, it's designed to seamlessly integrate with ROS 2 — and the team behind the project contribute as much code back to the mainline ROS 2 codebase as possible.
While micro-ROS has supported Arduino boards in the past through community contributions, its latest board addition is special: The software is now compatible with the Arduino Portenta H7, with official support from Arduino itself.
Designed for both hobbyist use and as a component in manufacturable products, the Arduino Portenta H7 includes a range of features of interest to the roboticist — including the Portenta Vision Shield range of add-ons, which offer camera and audio inputs with optional wireless network connectivity.
While micro-ROS support for the Arduino Portenta H7 is official, the overall micro-ROS Arduino port is described as experimental. "This software is not ready for production use," its maintainers warn. "It has neither been developed nor tested for a specific use case. However, the license conditions of the applicable open source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfils your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards, e.g., ISO 26262."
The Arduino Portenta H7 version of micro-ROS, which also supports the Arduino Due, Arduino Zero, and a selection of other Arduino-compatible microcontroller development boards, is now available on GitHub under the permissive Apache License 2.0.