The first meeting of the BOS (Boston ROS) Users Group was held at MassRobotics on January 31, 2018. The users group is intended to be a place where ROS users in the greater Boston robotics community can get together, hear something interesting going on in the ROS world, and exchange ideas. At this first event, Chris Lalancette, from Open Robotics, provided a presentation on how ROS2 fixes many of the architectural issues in ROS1, and an update on the current state of ROS2. Ian McMahon, from Rethink Robotics, gave a talk on how to use URDF to model a robotic arm, and gave the concrete example of modeling the Rethink Sawyer robot with URDF. He then gave two live demos of RViz and Gazebo running the simulated robot. The working group was attended by 40+ programmers and was standing room only!

Thank you to Rethink Robotics for sponsoring the pizza! If you were unable to make this first meeting, stay tuned for the announcement of a second meeting.