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The State of Linux-Powered Robots: From Lego Kits to World Domination
Quoting: The State of Linux-Powered Robots: From Lego Kits to World Domination | Tech Source —
Here’s a fact that shouldn’t surprise anyone who read my recent post “[Linux Won, and Nobody Noticed]” : Linux is the dominant operating system in robotics, and it’s not even close.
The Robot Operating System (ROS) — which we covered on this site back in 2011 when it was a scrappy open-source project — is now the global standard for robot development. ROS 2, its mature successor, runs on Linux and provides the middleware that connects sensors, actuators, AI models, and control systems. Nearly every serious robotics company on Earth uses it. Unitree’s humanoids? ROS-compatible. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas? Built on Linux. Figure AI’s warehouse bots working at BMW? Linux. Amazon’s Digit robots? Linux. The entire humanoid robotics industry is standing on open-source shoulders.
Why Linux? The same reasons it won everywhere else: it’s free, customizable to the extreme, has the best real-time kernel support, runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a GPU cluster, and doesn’t require paying Microsoft a licensing fee for every robot you build. When you’re manufacturing 10,000 humanoids, that last point alone saves you a small fortune.