The features listed below are available in the current ROS 2 release. Unless otherwise specified, the features are available for all supported platforms (Ubuntu 18.04, OS X 10.12.x, Windows 10), DDS implementations (eProsima Fast RTPS, RTI Connext and ADLINK Opensplice) and programming language client libraries (C++ and Python). For planned future development, see the Roadmap <Roadmap>.
| Functionality | Link | Fine print |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery, transport and serialization over DDS | Article | |
| Support for multiple DDS implementations, chosen at runtime | Tutorial <DDS-and-ROS-middleware-implementations> | Currently eProsima Fast RTPS, RTI Connext and ADLINK OpenSplice are fully supported. |
| Common core client library that is wrapped by language-specific libraries | Tutorial <ROS-2-Client-Libraries> | |
| Publish/subscribe over topics | Sample code, Article | |
| Clients and services | Sample code | |
| Set/retrieve parameters | Sample code | |
| ROS 1 - ROS 2 communication bridge | Tutorial | Available for topics and services, not yet available for actions. |
| Quality of service settings for handling non-ideal networks | Demo <Quality-of-Service> | |
| Inter- and intra-process communication using the same API | Demo <Intra-Process-Communication> | Currently only in C++. |
Composition of node components at compile-, link- or dlopen-time |
Demo <Composition> | Currently only in C++. |
| Support for nodes with managed lifecycles | Demo <Managed-Nodes> | Currently only in C++. |
| DDS-Security support | Demo | |
| Command-line introspection tools using an extensible framework | Tutorial <Introspection-with-command-line-tools> | |
| Launch system for coordinating multiple nodes | Tutorial <Launch-system> | |
| Namespace support for nodes and topics | Article | |
| Static remapping of ROS names | Tutorial <Node-arguments> | |
| Demos of an all-ROS 2 mobile robot | Demo | |
| Preliminary support for real-time code | Demo <Real-Time-Programming>, demo <Allocator-Template-Tutorial> | Linux only. Not available for Fast RTPS. |
| Preliminary support for "bare-metal" microcontrollers | Wiki |
Beside features of the platform the most impact of ROS comes from its available packages. The following are a few high profile packages which are available in the latest release: