What is ROS2 Foxy Fitzroy?
The name Foxy Fitzroy references the Fitzroy River Turtle, Rheodytes leukops, which is endemic to the Fitzroy River in Queensland, Australia. The “foxy” adjective describes something that is cunning and shrewd, like how foxes are depicted in many cultures around the world.
ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy is built on top of Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) and with a three-year support horizon and is a great choice for those who are either starting a new ROS project, or are looking to move their ROS 1 project to ROS 2. This release includes tier 1 support for Windows 10, MacOS Mojave, and Ubuntu 20.04 on both ARM64 and AMD64.
Full details about ROS2 Foxy Fitzroy can be found here.
Is ROS, really an operating system?
No. Its a set of components and a framework that forms an open source robotics middleware suite. Its a collection of software frameworks for robot software development.
History
Its early days were at Stanford Uni up to 2007. From 2007-2013 Willow Garage began developing the PR2 robot and ROS as the software to run it.
Since 2013 the OSRF (Open Source Robotics Foundation) and Open Robotics has looked after ROS. ROS2 is a significant API change and represents the future.
