The Operating System of Professional Robotics

Every robot you've built so far runs one Python script. Sensors → logic → motors, all in one file. That works for a toy. It doesn't work for a Boston Dynamics Spot, a NASA Mars rover, or a surgical robot.

Those robots have dozens of sensors, multiple computers, code written by teams across years. They need a way to pass data between components reliably, run algorithms in parallel, and swap hardware without rewriting software. That's what ROS2 (Robot Operating System 2) is for.

Boston Dynamics uses ROS2. NASA JPL uses ROS2. ABB industrial arms use ROS2. It's the de facto standard for serious robotics.

Here's the good news: you don't need a physical robot. Gazebo is a full physics simulator that runs inside ROS2. Real engineers use it daily — it's how they test code before deploying to a $500,000 robot arm. You'll use it too.

By the end of this project you'll understand nodes, topics, SLAM, LiDAR, costmaps, and the Nav2 navigation stack. That's a robotics engineering interview ready.