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.
