ROS Topics: Capabilities [ROS Topics]

One of the challenges of robot software systems is that they typically have a large number of components that interact with each other. A single robot may have processes that are doing path planning, obstacle avoidance, manipulation, sensor processing, and so on. Starting, stopping, and monitoring these processes to make sure that the right set is running to accomplish the robot's current task is a challenge. The robot operating system (ROS) "capabilities" package provides a systematic way of doing this. This article describes how capabilities work and how they can be used in typical robot applications.