ROSCon 2022 was held at the Kyoto International Conference Center in Kyoto, Japan from October 19th to the 21st. Three members from Rapyuta Robotics participated in the panel discussions and lectures.
What is ROSCon?
ROSCon is an annual international conference for ROS (Robot Operating System = a flexible framework for creating robot software) developers. ROSCon provides ROS developers of all levels, beginner to expert, to spend an extraordinary two days learning from and networking with the ROS community. This year, the venue was Kyoto, attracting developers and others from around the world.
Rapyuta Robotics at ROSCon
Our cloud robotics platform raputa.io supports ROS, it allows developers to easily extend the use of ROS to the cloud. We have been a sponsor of ROSCon since 2017, as we are regularly inspired by the ROS community to come up with innovative ideas and develop products based on ROS open-source software by adding our technology.
Many robot users, developers, and students from around the world gathered for this conference, and Rapyuta Robotics was proud to participate as a Gold Sponsor with a booth.
Our Experience
At the booth, we exhibited our solution, Rapyuta PA-AMR, a collaborative pick-assist robot, and introduced simulations using the Unreal Engine, which was the subject of a presentation by one of our engineers. Many people, including developers, researchers, students, and participating companies, stopped by our booth to exchange information and interact with each other.
Three members of our company took the stage for panel discussions and speeches. Gajan Mohanarajah (CEO) participated in a panel discussion on the topic of “Robotics Startup Companies in Japan” at ROSCon JP, which was held as one of the workshops earlier this year.
Yu Okamoto (Senior Software Engineer) and Larry Ng (Infrastructure Engineer) presented a ” Distributed robotics simulator with Unreal Engine” at ROSCon JP and ROSCon, respectively.
Unreal Engine (UE) is an open-source game engine used to develop various games, including multiplayer games. Their idea was to apply the various technologies used in games with many characters to robot simulations, so they used Unreal Engine as a simulator that supports ROS2. They explained how a simulator that can support many robots at once was created.
They also presented a live demo which was well received with several positive responses.
They also received questions from various perspectives, such as how many robots can be simulated, why Unreal Engine was chosen, and the other types of robots that can be used in this simulation.
Yu’s comment :
“We were grateful that so many people came to listen to our presentation. I also learned a lot from the many questions they asked at our booth after my presentation.
After attending ROSCon this time, I realized that many people are using ROS. There is a limit to what we can do as one company or one individual, and I feel the importance of increasing the quality of software by contributing to open source. I hope to continue contributing to ROS as much as I can.”
Larry’s comment :
“I was quite nervous at first because it was my first presentation at ROSCon, but I think I got used to it and could speak a little more smoothly in the second half. I was very grateful for the opportunity to present in front of so many people.
It was an engaging and enjoyable experience to meet people and to feel new products and ideas.”
Overall, our experience at ROScon was very fruitful as we were able to feel the community’s excitement throughout the three days and interact with people from a variety of backgrounds. We hope to continue to contribute to the development of ROS in every way we can.
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