ROS News for the Week of April 27th, 2026
Real-time 3D Gaussian splatting in RViz and TERCOM navigation for UAVs without GPS.
The ROS 2 Lyrical Luth release is now available, bringing significant advancements to the Robot Operating System. Key highlights include RVizSplat, a real-time 3D Gaussian splatting plugin for RViz, enabling high-fidelity 3D scene visualization directly in the robotics visualization tool. Additionally, tercom_nav implements TERCOM+ESKF navigation for GPS-denied UAV operations, complete with a Gazebo and PX4 simulation example. The community is encouraged to test the release by May 14th, with the top 20 testers receiving their choice of OSRA membership or ROS swag.
In related news, Dr. Anis Koubaa published a comprehensive analysis of over 8,000 academic ROS papers in ACM Computing Surveys, providing hard data on ROS usage trends. The mesh_tools library has been upgraded to ROS 2, and Czech Technical University released crl_ws_manager for easier colcon workspace management. A full calendar of robotics events through 2026 is also available, including Global ROSCon in Toronto and multiple summer schools.
- ROS 2 Lyrical Luth release includes RVizSplat for real-time 3D Gaussian splatting visualization
- tercom_nav provides GPS-denied UAV navigation using TERCOM+ESKF with full Gazebo/px4 simulation
- Analysis of over 8,000 academic ROS papers published in ACM Computing Surveys
Why It Matters
ROS 2's latest release enables advanced 3D visualization and reliable UAV navigation without GPS, accelerating robotics research.