ROS 2 Documentation

The Robot Operating System (ROS) is a set of software libraries and tools for building robot applications. From drivers and state-of-the-art algorithms to powerful developer tools, ROS has the open source tools you need for your next robotics project.

Since ROS was started in 2007, a lot has changed in the robotics and ROS community. The goal of the ROS 2 project is to adapt to these changes, leveraging what is great about ROS 1 and improving what isn’t.

Are you looking for documentation for a particular ROS package like MoveIt, image_proc, or octomap? Please see ROS Index or check out this index of per-package documentation.

This site contains the documentation for ROS 2. If you are looking for ROS 1 documentation, check out the ROS wiki.

If you use ROS 2 in your work, please see Citations to cite ROS 2.

Getting started

  • Installation

    • Instructions to set up ROS 2 for the first time

  • Tutorials

    • The best place to start for new users!

    • Hands-on sample projects that help you build a progression of necessary skills

  • How-to Guides

    • Quick answers to your “How do I…?” questions without working through the Tutorials

  • Concepts

    • High-level explanations of core ROS 2 concepts covered in the Tutorials

  • Contact

    • Answers to your questions or a forum to start a discussion

The ROS 2 project

If you’re interested in the advancement of the ROS 2 project:

ROS community resources

If you need help, have an idea, or would like to contribute to the project, please visit our ROS community resources.

General ROS project resources

  • ROS Enhancement Proposals (REPs) (ROS 1, ROS 2)

    • Proposals for new designs and conventions

  • ROS Robots (ROS 1, ROS 2)

    • Showcases robots projects from the community

    • Instructions on how to contribute a robot

  • ROS Wiki (ROS 1)

    • ROS 1 documentation and user modifiable content

    • Active until at least the last ROS 1 distribution is EOL

  • ROS.org (ROS 1, ROS 2)

    • ROS 1 and ROS 2 product landing page, with high-level description of ROS and links to other ROS sites

Events

Miscellaneous

Deprecated

  • ROS Answers (ROS 1, ROS 2)

    • ROS Answers was the ROS community Q&A website, until August, 2023. ROS Answers is currently available as a read-only resource.

  • ROS 2 Docs

    • API documentation up to and including Galactic

  • ROS 2 Design