Open Robotics, Canonical harden ROS with 10-year support

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Canonical and Open Robotics announced a 10-year partnership around extended security maintenance (ESM) and enterprise support for the Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS support will be made available as an option to Ubuntu Advantage support customers. Open Robotics is the organization behind ROS.

Users already taking advantage of critical security updates and common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE) fixes now have a single point of contact to guarantee timely and high quality fixes for ROS. Together, the two companies support the robotics community by making ROS robots and services easier to build and package, simpler to manage, and more reliable to deploy.

ROS ESM is Canonical’s offering for ROS developers that enables them to access a hardened and long-term supported ROS system for robots and its applications on Ubuntu. ROS ESM provides backports for critical security updates, CVE fixes, and critical bug fixes for ROS environments.

Related: 10 ROS-based robotics companies

By enabling Canonical’s ESM repositories, users will get trusted and stable binaries for ROS and Ubuntu base OS distribution. ROS ESM is available for end-of-life distributions as well as long-term Support versions of ROS.

“With ROS deployed as part of so many commercial products and services, it’s clear that our community needs a way to safely run robots beyond their software end-of-life dates,” said Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics. “Canonical’s track record delivering ESM, together with our deep understanding of the ROS code base, make this partnership ideal. Ubuntu Linux has been central to the ROS project from the beginning, when we released ROS Box Turtle on Ubuntu Hardy over a decade ago. We’re excited to be part of this offering that will enable users to access quality support from both organizations.”

“Canonical’s Ubuntu has been the primary platform for ROS since inception. Now open robots are rapidly and fundamentally changing what is possible in the physical world,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO, Canonical. “We are delighted to deepen our engagement with Open Robotics to secure the robots of the future, and simplify the lives of those responsible for creating and operating them.”