Renesas & eProsima Launch micro‑ROS Port for RA MCUs, Enabling ROS 2‑Based Robotics

Renesas Electronics Corporation has teamed up with eProsima, a company specializing in middleware solutions, to port micro‑ROS into the RA microcontrollers (MCUs), enabling easier development of professional robotics applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial systems. The Renesas EK‑RA6M5 evaluation kit is the official supported hardware platform for the micro‑ROS development framework.

The micro‑ROS framework is the industry’s robotics operating system for MCUs, providing a standardized way to integrate MCUs into the ROS 2 data space. By porting micro‑ROS onto Renesas RA MCUs, developers can adopt this robotic framework in Industry 4.0 and IIoT applications. The Renesas e² Studio integrated development environment, available on Windows and Linux, will support the micro‑ROS implementation, simplifying the use of the micro‑ROS client library.

The RA family of 32‑bit Arm Cortex‑M MCUs delivers optimized performance, security, connectivity and peripheral IP to address next‑generation embedded solutions. Renesas has built a comprehensive partner ecosystem that delivers a range of software and hardware building blocks ready to use with RA MCUs, including Microsoft Azure RTOS and FreeRTOS. This makes the RA family an ideal reference platform for micro‑ROS implementations.

eProsima is the primary developer of the micro‑ROS framework. CEO Jaime Martin Losa said, “Achieving cost‑effective development depends on a common platform that brings together hardware and software providers. micro‑ROS bridges the gap between microcontrollers and ROS 2, expanding the scope of new robotic applications based on embedded devices.”

The goal of this hardware‑and‑software partnership is to provide a comprehensive tool that covers the entire software‑development cycle for embedded systems across a broad spectrum of applications, including service robots for logistics and warehousing, defense and security, agriculture, and healthcare.

Renesas has also released a ROS‑based robot body controller as one of its “winning combinations,” showcasing the RA6M5’s micro‑ROS implementation alongside other Renesas components. These winning combinations feature complementary analog, power, timing devices and embedded processing, offering an easy‑to‑use architecture that simplifies design and reduces risk for customers in many application domains. Renesas claims more than 250 such winning combinations that work together seamlessly.

micro‑ROS hardware support is split between officially supported boards and community‑supported boards. Support for micro‑ROS on RA MCUs is now available through Renesas’ EK‑RA6M5 evaluation kit, which is the officially supported micro‑ROS hardware platform.