Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ROSIN (ROS-Industrial quality-assured robot software components) Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2020-12-31 Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project ROSIN has created a step change in the availability of high-quality intelligent robot software compo-nents for the European industry. This has been achieved by building on the existing open-source “Robot Operating System” (ROS) framework and leveraging its worldwide community. ROS and its subsidiary ROS-Industrial (European side led by TU Delft and Fraunhofer) is well-known, but its European industrial potential was underestimated. The two main critiques were (1) is the quality on par with industry, and (2) is there enough European industrial interest to justify investing in it? Partially, the answers were “yes and yes”; ample industrial installations were already operational at the start of ROS-IN. Partially however, the two questions held each other in deadlock, because further quality improve-ment required industrial investment and vice versa. ROSIN has resolved the deadlock and put Europe in a leading position.For software quality, ROSIN introduced a breakthrough innovation in automated code quality testing led by IT University of Copenhagen, complemented with a full palette of quality assurance measures including novel model-in-the-loop continuous integration testing with ABB robots. Simultaneously, more ROS-Industrial tools and components have been created by making 50% of the ROSIN budget available to collaborating European industrial users and developers for so-called Focused Technical Projects. ROSIN maximized budget efficacy by alleviating yet another deadlock; experience shows that industry will fund ROS-Industrial developments, but only after successful delivery. ROSIN provided grants for developers to achieve those initial successful results. Together with broad education activi-ties (open for any EU party) led by Fachhochshule Aachen and community-building activities led by Fraunhofer, ROSIN has let ROS-Industrial reach critical mass with further self-propelled growth resulting in a widely adopted, high-quality, open-source industrial standard. Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far ROSIN defined two objectives: (1) assuring the availability of high-quality robot software tools and components, and (2) creating a sufficiently large European user- and developer base. WP 2 & 3 addressed the 1st objective (1) In WP2, the ROSIN FTP program has funded 57 project to develop new open source ROS software. Results of these projects are already available to the community in open source repositories, and numerous collaborations have been initiated as a result of ROSIN FTPs, boosting the ROS-Industrial Europe community that has become a very active and spread community, as the ROS-Industrial Conference organized by ROSIN partner Fraunhofer IPA online in Dec 2020.WP3 took multiple complementary routes to stimulate the aware-ness for quality in the ROS and ROS-Industrial communities. Socially, WP3 managed to mobilize the community around the topic of quality through the channel of the ROS Quality Assurance Working Group. Technically, WP3 has created several lightweight quality tools, has executed several technical studies (code scans), and adapted key Software Engineering techniques for improving quality in message passing systems (reactive programming, model-in-the loop testing, models-at-runtime, code generation, and fuzzing). As a result, the results of the quality assurance activities have exceeded the initial objectives in terms of code analysis of ROS-core and ROS2 components, packages developed outside of the ROSIN consortium that use ROSIN tools, and initiatives initiated by ROSIN that have been taken over by the community.WP 4 & 5 addressed the 2nd objective (2)In WP4, during this reporting period 23 ROS-I Schools for students and 21 ROS-I Academies for professionals were conducted by ROSIN partners and third parties. More than 1600 engineers were trained in the use of ROS, and with more than 600 trained by 3rd parties, all these education activities are self-sustaining now. ROS2 has been incorporated to the curriculum of all these activities. In relation to online activities, the ROS-I MOOC by TUD has had another edition, with a new one (self-funded after ROSIN) is in preparation, and FHA developed modular unit-based courses available in the format of the Sphinx documentation tool.In WP5, dissemination has continued increasing with augmented social media presence thanks to the ROSIN Twitter account, and with a number of trade magazine articles as well as blog entries, which leveraged the growing interest in ROS.Physical outreach also continued despite of the Covid crisis, with activities successfully moving online (e.g. RIC-EU conference with more than 200 attendees). During the project runtime, ROS-Industrial Conference has been built up to the prime European ROS community event.The ROS-Industrial Consortium Europe (RIC-EU) has achieved sustainability and the activities of ROSIN have been completely handed over to RIC-EU as planned. Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) Robotics research has created, and will continue to create great advances in robot abilities such as (3D) perception, motion planning, navigation, etc. The ROSIN project has brought these advanced abilities to industrial applicability by moving the global ROS-Industrial framework significantly beyond the State of the Art. With respect to the previous state of ROS-Industrial, ROSIN has achieved the following results:- The core of ROS and relevant packages for the industrial community have been quality tested and verified. An important part of this breakthrough has been the use of novel automated software quality testing algorithms. This breakthrough has brought ROS-Industrial across the first barrier: quality is now a main priority in the ROS/ROS2 community, and this is eliminating the obstacle for industry to fully engage in the ROS-Industrial community, as the massive industrial engagement in ROS2 proves.- The ROS-Industrial community is reaching critical mass amongst industrial users. In addition, more than 1600 engineers have been trained to be active contributors to ROS-Industrial. This critical mass ensures further self-sustained community growth. As a result, ROS-Industrial has become a widely adopted standard for industrial intelligent robot software components, e.g. for 3D perception and motion planning. System integrators, software companies, and robot producers are using the open-source framework and the rich choice in libraries to build their own closed- source derivatives which they will sell and for which they will provide support to industrial customers. This has been proven by the more than 50 videos of successful industrial systems running ROS documented by ROSIN.ROS-Industrial and its parent framework ROS have worldwide communities. Thanks to the European investments in ROSIN and many other ongoing H2020 projects that contribute to ROS and ROS- Industrial, European companies (both large industry as well as SMEs) are taking a leading role in further development, commercialization, and use of the ROS-enabled robot abilities (e.g. participation of EU companies in ROS2 working groups). ROSIN strategy to target local industry through trainings in fieldlabs and innovation hubs has proven very helpful for European SMEs in this direction. The positive effect is already quickly expanding from the field of industrial robots into the rapidly growing markets of agro robotics, health care robotics, and other types of service robots. ROSIN INDUSTRIAL DEMONSTRATOR AT IROS18 ROS-I ACADEMY 2/5 OF 2019, STUTTGART
