ROS News for the Week of March 16th, 2026
The ROS community's weekly digest reveals a packed 2026 calendar with ROSCon events worldwide, a new dual-drone VSLAM project, and open GSoC applications.
The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) released its weekly community roundup, highlighting a surge in global activity for the Robot Operating System (ROS) ecosystem in 2026. The headline is the official opening of the Call for Proposals for ROSCon Global 2026, set for Toronto in September, with a proposal deadline of April 26th. Concurrently, the OSRF, alongside partners JdeRobot and RoboPlan, announced their 2026 Google Summer of Code programs, inviting students to intern on core development projects. The update also added ROSCon Spain and ROSCon UK to the growing roster of regional conferences and listed immediate deadlines for diversity scholarships and event RSVPs, including a ROS Breakfast at Modex in Atlanta.
Technically, the newsletter showcased a significant open-source project: 'drone_multislam_orb3slam,' which demonstrates simultaneous Visual SLAM (VSLAM) with two drones. The system integrates the PX4 autopilot stack, the ORB-SLAM3 vision algorithm, and the COVINS (Collaborative Visual-Inertial SLAM) framework for multi-agent coordination. This project exemplifies the advanced, real-world research being built on ROS 2.
Beyond events and projects, the news digest included community updates like the 'ROS 2 Control' wiring guide for the LeKiwi mobile platform and minutes from the ROS Technical Steering Committee. It also summarized industry headlines, such as Gecko Robotics securing a major U.S. Navy contract and Amazon's acquisition of delivery robot provider RIVR, underscoring ROS's expanding role in commercial and defense robotics.
- ROSCon Global 2026 CFP is now open for Toronto, with proposals due April 26 and diversity scholarship applications closing March 22.
- OSRF, JdeRobot, and RoboPlan are all accepting project proposals for Google Summer of Code 2026, offering paid internships in ROS core development.
- Featured project 'drone_multislam_orb3slam' enables two drones to perform collaborative Visual SLAM using PX4, ORB-SLAM3, and the COVINS agent framework.
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