Through over fifteen years of programming ROS code, I’ve come to understand my own strengths and weaknesses, as well as those in ROS. To overcome my own flaws, I’ve automated as much of the metadata programming as possible so that time can be focused on the core robotics algorithms. To understand how ROS has evolved, we’ll take a look at how the ROS Introspect library has grown over the years, and reflect on where ROS could go in the future.

David Lu is the founder of Metro Robots, a robotics software consulting firm, focusing on improving robot navigation in real environments around people. He is a leading member of the ROS open-source community as a maintainer and contributor to many of the core ROS packages and four-time presenter and two-time program chair for ROSCon conference. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis and previously worked at PickNik Robotics, Locus Robotics, Bossa Nova Robotics, Willow Garage, Walt Disney Imagineering R&D, Google and IBM.