Ubuntu at ROS World 2020: Learn how to do more for your robot

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Come and connect with the Ubuntu robotics team on November 12th to answer all of your questions. This is the first time ROSCon has ever been virtual and is the first time it’s ever been free to attend, so we’re looking forward to seeing tons of new faces! We have ROS experts and field engineers ready and waiting to talk. Answers to all your Ubuntu, ROS support and security questions are just a few clicks away. We have someone stationed on the booth at all times. Come along, connect, ask all your questions and find out how Ubuntu can support your robot. And while you’re at it, grab an ROS T-shirt – we’re on the back!

Here’s a quick overview of what Canonical, the company that publishes Ubuntu, is bringing to ROS World 2020.

Extend support for Ubuntu and ROS beyond EOL

This year, first and foremost, we want to talk about products based on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and ROS Kinetic. Both of these are reaching end-of-life in April 2021. Are you worried about migrating? Don’t be: we’re bringing extended support to Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and ROS Kinetic. Tired of trying to decide if you should upgrade to Melodic or Noetic, or jump all the way to ROS 2? Tired of chasing through the forum for patches? Would you prefer not to worry about security or migration at all and focus on your robot? Come and connect.

Our new offering ‘ESM for ROS’ answers the problems we see robotics organisations grappling with every day. ESM for ROS means enhanced and active security on your ROS packages and their Ubuntu dependencies (including Python 2), one place that you can call for all the answers, and it means you add up to 10 years of security patches and ROS maintenance to your robot. Anyone at the booth is more than happy to answer your questions, set up a meeting or ‘Talk with …’ us and we’ll be right there.

ROS demos and discussions

Perhaps you’re coming to ROS World to see all the latest things people have been working on. We share that feeling and are looking forward to popping to and from all the other ‘booths’ to catch up with our colleagues and get updates on what they’re working on.

In our booth, you can look forward to chatting about ESM, as well as ROS on Kubernetes (K8s) using the edge optimised MicroK8s. You’ll get the opportunity to learn all about snaps, Ubuntu Core, and their robust, transactional upgrades by talking to the engineers that helped create them. If you’re interested in how this has changed from last year, check out our write-up for ROSCon 2019 in Macau.

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Talk with the Ubuntu robotics team at ROS World 2020

When you log in to the event you’ll have lots of options, lots of people to talk to and lots of ways to do it. Whatever you do while you’re attending ROSCon 2020, say hi to our robotics team.First, search for Ubuntu under the Gold sponsors’ list, the big orange logo should give us away. We want to talk to you about any problems you’re having Ubuntu and what you’re using it for. A few topic we’re excited to talk about this year:

• Extending ROS Kinetic and Ubuntu support for up to 10 years
• Robot app stores, with over the air updates and autonomous/self-healing updates (case study)
• Guaranteeing hardware and software compatibility. We can make sure that your ROS robot running Ubuntu ‘just works’ all the time with your own hardware or with already ‘certified hardware

Sounds like a conversation you’d like to join? Come find the team and meet them… well, from a safe distance!

Kyle Fazzari

Kyle is a staff engineer at Canonical, where he works as the technical lead of the Robotics team. He’s been using ROS since the Electric release, he’s a contributor to both ROS 1 and 2, and is a member of the ROS 2 Technical Steering Committee. He’s also a core designer of and contributor to the snapcraft CLI as well as snapd, two key technologies behind snaps and Ubuntu Core. Prior to his time at Canonical, Kyle worked as a roboticist and technical lead in an R&D lab for the United States Department of Defense. In his spare time he can be found working on his farm and playing with his four children.

Sid Faber

Sid works in the Robotics team at Canonical. He’s the chair of the ROS 2 Security Working Group, and his day-to-day involves designing and adding security fixes and features to ROS 1 and 2. Sid has been active in the cybersecurity field since his first SANS course in 2000. Since then he’s worked in the CERT division of the Software Engineering Institute at CMU, served as adjunct faculty at Pitt and Carnegie Mellon, and most recently was the CISO at Federated Investors. In his spare time he’s likely to be found disassembling old electronics to find parts for robotics projects.

Ted Kern

Ted is a roboticist at Canonical, developing ROS 2 security tooling like the NoDL interface spec and secure launch tools. He’s been a ROS user since Indigo, working with it in field and space robotics. He’s an alumnus of Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked in the Field Robotics Center, LunarX Team, and the Biorobotics Laboratory. Prior to Canonical, Ted specialized in sensor design and human robot interaction, working on cobots for warehouse settings and rovers for extreme environments.

Jeremie Deray

Jeremie Deray is a Software Engineer in the Robotics team at Canonical and a PhD in robotic navigation. With more than 6 years of experience in ROS programming, on robots ranging from mobile-bases to humanoids, Jeremie is participating in the development of ROS 2 and the broadening of snap package usage in ROS.

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