Is there a working group for maintaining ROS 2-based robots in industry? 🤖
Siemens identifies four critical gaps in deploying ROS 2 robots at industrial scale, sparking major industry collaboration.
Siemens has launched a major industry call to form a dedicated working group focused on solving the practical challenges of deploying ROS 2-based robots in industrial environments. In a detailed forum post, Siemens engineer Florian outlined four critical gaps preventing widespread industrial adoption: shipping systems to production, debugging complex integrations with PLCs and safety sensors, managing reliable software updates, and monitoring fleet health at scale. The initiative has already gained traction with companies like OTTO Motors (Rockwell Automation) expressing interest, highlighting widespread industry recognition of these deployment bottlenecks.
Technical discussions have revealed promising open-source solutions emerging from the community, including ros2_medkit for structured diagnostics using SOVD-aligned REST APIs and AUTOSAR DEM approaches, OpenTelemetry for ROS observability, and Transitive for remote fleet monitoring. Siemens has committed to open collaboration, sharing their own learnings through published talks and expressing interest in EU funding opportunities and student thesis projects. The working group aims to align these fragmented efforts, creating standardized approaches that could accelerate industrial robotics adoption by solving the 'last mile' problems of real-world deployment beyond research prototypes.
- Siemens identifies four critical deployment gaps: shipping, debugging multi-system environments, reliable updates, and fleet health monitoring for ROS 2 robots
- Industry heavyweights including OTTO Motors (Rockwell Automation) have immediately expressed interest in joining the proposed working group
- Open-source tools like ros2_medkit (using SOVD-aligned APIs) and Transitive framework are emerging as early solutions for diagnostics and remote monitoring
Why It Matters
This collaboration could finally bridge the gap between ROS 2 research prototypes and reliable industrial deployment at scale.