Ellen Huet for Bloomberg:  Depending on whom you ask, the Robot Operating System—or ROS—is kind of like the plumbing in a house. Or it’s like a set of Lego building blocks. Or the human nervous system.

However you describe it, ROS is everywhere. It's the shared system of underlying code that powers robots around the world, from the hobbyist creations in a garage to industrial robots at Toyota. It's also the focus of the latest episode of Ventures, a video series about startups from Bloomberg Technology.

ROS plays a major part in the recent boom in robots. Because ROS is so widely used, it makes it easy for engineers to cobble together the basic skills a robot needs, such as connecting to a camera to see, or building a real-time map of the world around it. In that way, it's kind of like assembling Legos or hooking a sink up to a wall. ROS also takes care of the robot's underlying needs, comparable to a human's need to breathe and pump blood. That allows roboticists to focus on the hard part: making a robot think.  Full Article: