Improving the Quality of ROS Applications with HAROS
Date:
Abstract
This tutorial is targeted at ROS roboticists (i.e., developers of robotics software), first and foremost, but also at software engineers (researchers or otherwise) interested in the domain of robotics software. Our main goal is to reinforce the idea that software for robotic systems is becoming progressively more complex, despite the existence of established software ecosystems like ROS.
Ensuring that software works as intended is a crucial (but not trivial) task, but proper quality assurance processes are rarely seen in the open-source robotics community. There are several tools capable of improving ROS software and detecting a variety of issues early in the development process; HAROS is among such tools and offers a variety of analyses integrated in a unified interface. Furthermore, over the past five years, it has been gaining traction among the ROS community, namely in the ROS-Industrial and ROS Quality Assurance groups.
The main value, and outcome, for the participants of this tutorial is to learn how to use automated analysis tools specifically targeting ROS software, how to interpret analysis results and how to integrate such tools and workflows within their own projects. This is particularly relevant if advanced robots are to be marketable, and eventually certified, in safety-critical contexts.