GSoD22
This document describes the project proposal created for the 2022 Google Season of Docs. This project is based on the GSoD exploration document, where we discussed multiple documentation ideas. If you have any questions please message gsod AT osrfoundation.org.
Looking for GSoD 2021? See this page instead.
Open Robotics is a leader in a global community of robotics engineers, scientists, hobbyists, and entrepreneurs. We’re committed to developing and supporting open source robotics software, in particular the ROS (Robot Operating System) tools and libraries (http://ros.org), the Gazebo simulator (http://gazebosim.org), and the Open-RMF system (https://www.open-rmf.org/) that enables robotic system interoperability. This software is used and developed by people in labs and companies around the world, many of whom will come together for the annual ROS Developer Conference, ROSCon (http://roscon.ros.org/). We believe that Google Season of Docs will help to encourage more contributions and further promote a sense of community-driven software. As a bonus, the robotics community will also get new and exciting documentation.
Open-RMF is a wide range of open specifications and software tools that aim to ease the integration and interoperability of robotic systems, building infrastructure, and user interfaces. You can find more detailed info in the repos under the Open-RMF github organization and you can see and test it in action on the Open-RMF demos repository.
Open-RMF currently captures most of its documentation in the ROS2 multirobot book. Open-RMF, however, is currently lacking a coherent set of guides for some of the beginner concepts.
The goal of this project is to write technical articles explaining some of the introductory concepts. To accomplish this goal, the writer will have to do interviews with members of the ROS 2 and Open-RMF development team to understand the technical concept, and then put that concept together into a easy-to-explain article.
At the end of this project, one or more of the following tutorials should be complete:
- Introduction
- Fleet adapter examples and tutorials
- ROS 2 and Open-RMF
- Traffic editor
- Simulation demos
- RMF core
- Flexible tasks in RMF
- Integration
- RMF web
- Security
- Roadmap
Open-RMF is a new and innovative framework in the field of mulirobot environment. As a young project the current goal is to ease the adoption of the software through examples and ready-to-use integrations. This should initially help boost interest on the framework, generating new users, then creating new participants and contributors in the long run.
As documentation is generated and released it would be published to robotics communities through different means like the ROS Discourse, the Gazebo Simulation one or at the ROSCon (http://roscon.ros.org/). Since Open-RMF is a collection of libraries we would chose the core library RMF Traffic to measure the increase of the user base. A successful completion of this project would be measured as an initial increase on repository clones of at least 10-20% on this library:
In the long run (>1 year) this should also mean increase on the number of contributors and active participants on the framework development. However due to the complexity and novelties of the system we don't expect to see this result right after the documentation is released.
| Budget item | Amount | Running Total | Notes/justifications |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical writer interviews with the developers, new tutorials, and post-validation with developers |
$6000 | $6000 | |
| Mentor stipends | 500 | $7000 | 2 mentor stipends x 500 each |
We have quite a few experience generating documentation and tutorials. ROS, one of our main open source projects, uses a wiki that any developer can update when releasing their own packages.
In addition, we autogenerate API documentation from the source code and it is published on http://docs.ros.org/ .
Other examples are the tutorials that we created for our 3D robotic simulator project, Gazebo:
http://gazebosim.org/tutorials
Most recently, a new documentation system was created for a group of libraries named Ignition Robotics that we also lead:
https://ignitionrobotics.org/docs
All these projects are open source and the documentation is produced in different ways. Sometimes it is an open wiki and other times requires a pull request, review, and multiple approvals.
Open Robotics has successfully participated in multiple editions of the Google Summer of Code program during the years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. We also participated in the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Google Season of Docs. We can leverage our previous experience to keep the technical writers involved in our community during and after GSoD, keep the mentors engaged with them, and also make sure that all the technical writers stay on schedule to complete the goals of the project.
If you meet the general requirements and are interested in working on the OSRF project during the Google Season of Docs, you can apply by:
- Sending an email to: gsod@osrfoundation.org , with the subject line: GSoD Application
- Your application should include the following information:
- Your name
- A phone number
- An email address where we can reach you for daily communication
Please list relevant technical courses you have taken. In particular, we are interested in your background in:
- Robotics
- Software engineering
Please list any experience you’ve had writing technical documentation. For each example, please include a brief description of the overall project along with the specific contributions you made and when you made them.
In addition to the above information, we are interested in concrete examples of your work, which may include:
- Documentation samples: please send an example of documentation you have written that you are proud of; be prepared to answer questions about it.
- Publications: if you have participated in undergraduate or graduate research, please include a copy of any relevant publications.
- Specialized skills: if you have experience/skills in particular areas that you believe would be useful to one of our projects, please let us know.
- Personal website: if you have a website that discusses your research or other projects, please include a link.
- Personal projects: do you have a website, github/gitlab repo, blog post, video, or other work you think we would find interesting and relevant? Please include it in your application.
- References: names and contact information for people you have worked with who can recommend you.
In a paragraph or two, describe your interests and background. Please tell us why you’d like to work on our GSoD project, what topics you would like to cover, and why you think it is important to cover them.