Even more belatedly than last time, the meeting minutes for the regular meeting of the Technical Governance Committee held on the 22nd of May, 2025, and 26th of June, 2025, were approved in the subsequent meetings and are now available in the official minutes repository. You can find the official minutes just below, as well as a Markdown version in the lower posts. The PDF version is the official version.
The next TGC meeting will take place in late August, 2025. The minutes of the July meeting should be approved in that meeting and posted publicly shortly thereafter.
Geoff Biggs, TGC Chair, called the meeting to order at 22:03 on 22 May 2025 UTC.
Existing Business
Confirmation of minutes of meeting TGC-20250424-Regular
Approved by consensus
Project reports
Project update: ROS (Presented by Michael Carroll, PMC Lead)
ROS 2 Kilted Kaiju - T-12 hrs
We had 210 contributors of pull requests over the last year, and even more contributors to review and comments on those PRs
We created 563 issues for the tutorial testing party to ask the community to smoke test various configurations for the release. We had 30 contributors close 400 issues.
We received really good feedback and participation from many new contributors.
Added Ubuntu Jammy as a Tier 3 platform for Jazzy
Emerson Knapp of Polymath Robotics has been made a full PMC member, mentored by Christophe Bedard from Apex.AI.
L-Turtle roadmap planning
Roadmap and ROSCon talk planning ongoing
Looking into incorporating the concept of all nodes as lifecycle nodes
Improving quality of pixi workflow
More standardization around some common service messages, originated out of the simulation interfaces work by Robotec and NVIDIA
Noetic going EOL on May 31, the end of ROS 1 in terms of PMC maintainership
Project update: Gazebo (Presented by Steve Peters, PMC Member, on behalf of the Project Lead)
Roadmap updates
Migration from Qt5 to Qt6 completed
Using Zenoh in gz-transport - finding Zenoh, pub/subn and pub/sub graph cache merged, currently working on aysnc req/resp. CI support is mostly completed for all platforms. On track for completion before Jetty feature freeze
Command line: use binaries instead of shared libraries completed; remaining work in gazebosim/gz-tools#7
Examining ReactFlow as a potential framework for developing a FOSS front-end diagram editor for bevy_impulse workflows
Project update: ROS Controls (Presented by Sai Kishor, PMC Member, on behalf of the PMC Lead)
Preliminary meeting with our GSoC candidate is done, initial plan drafted and follow-ups planned.
Post GSoC selection process there are a couple of dangling PRs.
For the ROSCon UK and ROSCon Singapore workshops, proposals have been submitted.
Started scoping work for micro-ros and socketcan support
We have observed that when multiple spawners are spawned at startup, some are frozen time to time and resulting in their controllers no being spawned
Upon debugging, we found that creating multiple spawner nodes is causing the issue, we fixed it using the filelock to make the spawners wait and spawn sequentially
Adopt topic-based-ros2-control package and add 2 new committers -- They are doing a minor refactor and once it is done, it is good to be moved to ros-controls repositories
We have branched for Jazzy in all ros-controls repositories
Standardize how the joint limits are defined in the URDF
Single source of information
MoveIt and other frameworks are maintaining these limits in a separate yaml
Using Acceleration and jerk limits can help in the integration of state-of-the-art interpolators like Ruckig directly into the framework
Have the joint limits enforced respectively in ros2_control framework
Project update: Infrastructure (Presented by Clara Berendsen, PMC Member, on behalf of the PMC Lead)
In the previous month, the PMC has been focusing on Delta support
Kilted release
Most work on the snapshot repository is completed. Migration is ready to go.
Book repository and development work is in progress, almost completed.
Gazebo farm migration work also began, targeting migration by the end of July, coordinating with the Gazebo PMC to avoid disruption of the Jetty workflow.
Working heavily on ROS archive clearing, changing the name depending on the platform, this package is intended to be a new way of installing the repository configuration and keys, and will allow us to update the keys more frequently with fewer disruptions.
Windows Server update - nightlies have been running and will have constant information on regressions.
Doing dynamic agent scaling and testing for Gazebo to remove agents during weekends and save costs.
Json project working on a revamp of vcstool with newer python support.
Other Existing Business Matters
Status of SIGs/TCs
Technical Committee on Enhancement Proposal Processes
Goal: Upgrade and improvements over REP
Chair: Geoff Biggs
Members: PMC Leads
Update:
The document is undergoing heavy review by the TGC and PMC members. The TC is working on reviewing, resolving, and incorporating comments.
Planning to have this be completed by the June TGC meeting.
SIG on Interoperability
Chair: Michael Grey
Update: No meeting due to the planned date falling on a holiday.
Discussion on communications and processes in the TGC
Discourse reorganization - Geoff Biggs discussed updates to Discourse and the planned reorganization of the platform. All project forums to be merged under Open Robotics Discourse, work to begin in June. The community has been informed, and there has generally been positive feedback from the community. Migration costs to be incurred from merging Gazebo Discourse with ROS Discourse.
TGC chat platform - There are ongoing concerns with using matrix, more research needs to be done.
Updates on TGC async comms, and how we can continue to improve async discussions amongst the group.
Follow-up on project funding
Reviewed condensed 2025 timeline, the OSRF board and managementās fiscal policies on asset reserves, and responsible management of the Foundationās responsibilities to the ROS community and ecosystem, including the ability to withstand extended financial downturns and fundraising challenges due to various factors globally and economically.
OSRA membership is not yet at steady state, but has exceeded its ramp-up expectations for Year 1.
The 2025 OSRA funding cycle for project-specific requests is now in progress. The PMCs are currently working on funding proposals, which will then be iterated on with the TGC before proceeding to deliberation and allocation.
Final voting for the 2025 funding cycle is planned for the July 20 TGC meeting. The 2026 funding cycle is scheduled to begin in late Q3 2025.
L-Turtle planning
Plans for soliciting community feedback
Plans to follow up with various OSRA members who have offered contributions in various forms
Emphasized OSRA TGC membersā invitations to participate in PMC meetings
New Business
TGC SIG Proposal: ROS HAL Standardization for Enabling Physical AI
Background: Robotics is at the cusp of its GPT moment with several AI researchers, startups, and industry practitioners actively working on developing foundation models and tools to enable data collection and training. Large datasets of robots performing various tasks are aggregated through simulation and real-world teleoperation. The performance of these models is strongly correlated with diversity in the dataset, ie, collecting data from different embodiments, i.e.varying combinations of robots, cameras, grippers etc. A key challenge in this space lies in acquiring data from and sending commands to diverse hardware, encompassing both real and simulated systems. A related hurdle is the lack of standardized conventions and nomenclature for describing robotic embodiments. These are precisely the challenges that ROS has effectively addressed. Consequently, we believe that by leveraging ROS, we have a significant opportunity to advance cutting-edge robotics research and propel the entire field forward. We are at a pivotal moment, and it is crucial that we capitalize on the existing momentum within the robotics community.
The proposers shared a plan for the Special Interest Group (SIG) focus areas, existing standards to leverage on, goals, and process.
Action: It was agreed that the TGC will continue to review and discuss the proposal async, and vote on it in the June 2025 TGC meeting.
Report on hosting web services with Oregon State Universityās Open Source Lab
The OSU OSLās funding and continuity concern has been resolved, so there is no longer an imminent challenge to the part of Open Robotics infrastructure that is hosted at OSU OSL.
A debrief was held to walk through considerations and mitigation strategies in the event of another similar matter arising.
Other Items
Announced and welcomed new OSRA members:
PAL Robotics - Supporting Organisation
Canonical - Platinum member
ROSCon 2025 updates - invitations and proposal deadlines
New L-Turtle name official: Lyrical Luth
Adjournment - Geoff Biggs adjourned the meeting at 24:26 UTC.
ACTION ITEMS
The meeting minutes will be circulated to the TGC for review and approval before the next meeting by the TGC Chair.
The OSRF team will share further updates on the funding request and communication guidelines.
ROS HAL Standardization for Enabling Physical AI to begin feedback stage of proposal.
Geoff Biggs, TGC Chair, called the meeting to order at 15:04 on 26 June 2025 UTC.
Existing Business
Confirmation of minutes of meeting TGC-20250522-Regular
Approved by consensus
Project reports
Project update: ROS (Presented by Michael Carroll, PMC Lead)
ROS 1 Noetic officially EOL
Kilted Kaiju updates
1st sync out, 1st patch release happening this week
Retrospective discussion: work on collective PR push for āKilted Kudosā, start releasing beta images/packages through normal channels rather than testing, consider stopping non-LTS releases
Formal Decisions by PMC:
Add Julien Enoch as a Committer, mentored by Yadu (May 27)
Add Yu Yuan as a Committer, mentored by Yadu (May 27)
Update REP-2000 to indicate Connext 7.3.0 (May 27)
Update REP-2000 to point rolling to kilted (May 27)
Add Andrew Symington as a Committer, mentored by Alejandro (June 26)
Update REP-2000 with default RMW indicator (June 26)
Ongoing Work
ROSCon proposal reviews
L-turtle roadmap planning
ros2-gbp maintenance handoff
Addressing CI āgreennessā
More process around deprecation/removal cycles (wrt ament_target_dependencies)
Looking Forward
L-turtle feature planning
Next community meetings for PMC and Working Groups, continue push for community attendance
Project update: Gazebo (Presented by Carlos Aguero, Interim PMC Lead, on behalf of the Project Lead)
Roadmap updates
Migration from Qt5 to Qt6 completed
Using Zenoh in gz-transport - aysnc req/resp, graph cache for services, and synchronous/oneway/no_input srvs merged
CI support is mostly completed for all platforms. On track for completion before Jetty feature freeze
Command line: use binaries instead of shared libraries Gz sim executable and fix GUI bug merged; remaining work in gazebosim/gz-tools#7
Support Bazel for all Gazebo libraries
Goal: Migrate Bazel workspace to bzlmod - ongoing
Removing version number from package names completed
Project update: Open-RMF (Presented by Michael Grey, PMC Lead)
Next-generation planning
Have interfaces that are well-aligned with other mobile robot interoperability standards like VDA5050 and MassRobotics AMR Interop
Have strong integration with Nav2
Support both AGVs and AMRs in a way that exercises the full value of both types of robots
Provide commercial-friendly open source reference implementations of every capability
Allow the reference implementations to be swapped out for proprietary commercial solutions
Looking for feedback and input from the community
Fully modular traffic and infrastructure management
We expect each of the following capabilities to be provided by modules that can be implemented independently and custom-made based on the needs of a deployment:
Task Server: Dispatching goals to robots
Destination Server: Reserving destinations for robots to avoid conflicts between goals
Plan Server: Generating conflict-free multi-agent traffic plans to bring robots from their current locations to their goals
Plan Executor: Executing a plan, including interfacing with infrastructure as needed
Project update: ROS Controls (Presented by Bence Magyar, PMC Lead)
GSoC project is well on track, seems like weāll have time for stretch goals
Proposal for Standardized Hardware Status Reporting
Internal framework changes to pass Executor/Node Interfaces to Hardware Components for better reporting
Both ROSCon UK and ROSCon Singapore workshops accepted
Created topic-based-hardware-interfaces repo
Added 2 new committers: Marq Rasmussen & Jafar Abdi
First package landed, equivalent to ātopic_based_ros2_controlā
Improve emergency/fault/protective stop support
By managing interfaces & controllers after DEACTIVATE call on hardware components
Discussions around trajectory_msgs contributions
General support from PMC to maintain āurdfdom and friends (maybe robot state publisher/joint state publisher)ā
CI improvements towards Windows support
Project update: Infrastructure (Presented by Steven! Ragnarok, PMC Lead)
Major update to the ROS repository GPG keys, will need to account for the snapshot repository expiration timing next time
GSoC project - bringing vcstool up to-date and getting it released from the ROS infra projects rather than from its current maintainer who is no longer active. It needed to be renamed to vcstool 2.1
Gazebo build farm - work to upgrade machines to 24.0.4 in progress, aiming to complete by end of July. If it is missed, however, infra will have to free during the Jetty release in September.
Github is making it hard for anonymous users to access Github resources, so our infra and community projects are subject to severe rate limits when accessing public resources. We now need authentication keys for most uses. Also working on moving to a tiered approach and have a single Github update that runs periodically instead.
Also working on ROS snapshot and bootstrap repository migration to 24.0.4.
Also working on getting Mac support on the Gazebo build farm.
Other Existing Business Matters
Status of SIGs/TCs
Enhancement Proposal Process Technical Committee
Chair: Geoff Biggs
Final report: The TC-EPP will be dissolved on the 30th of June. It has completed a draft of a new process to replace the existing outdated ROS Enhancement Proposal process, with the exception of a name for the documents that will be created by this process. The final draft will be submitted to the TGC for approval by the end of June. Once approved, the OSRF will begin implementing the process.
SIG on Interoperability
Chair: Michael Grey
Update: Next topic will be traffic management interfaces with open discussion to follow. Request to TGC to help promote the meetings.
Discussion on communications and processes in the TGC
The Discourse transformation is (mostly) complete, with only the data migration for existing Open-RMF and Gazebo discussions awaiting at the time of agenda preparation. These are both expected to be complete by the end of June. Following the completion of the work on Discourse, work will begin on our chat service. A revised chat service proposal will be distributed in early July for TGC feedback.
New Business
A. Project Leader nominee review for Infrastructure
Steven! RagnaroĢk has notified the OSRF that he does not intend to stand for Infrastructure Project Leader at the end of 2025. So as to allow plenty of time for handover to the next project leader, he has requested that the election of the new PL be held now.
The Infrastructure PMC has elected to have Scott Logan (Intrinsic) as their candidate. Candidate statement: Iād like to step forward as a candidate for the OSRA Infrastructure Project Leader position. As an infrastructure team member for quite some time and a substantial contributor to many of the assets overseen by this team, I believe that I am qualified to guide our resources and investments and continue to maintain and improve the experience and productivity of the other OSRA projects we support.
Motion made to appoint Scott Logan as the next Infrastructure PMC Lead; approved by consensus.
B. TGC SIG Proposal: ROS HAL Standardization for Enabling Physical AI
A proposal has been received to form a new Special Interest Group (SIG) to āconsolidate and standardize how we define interfaces to robots, creating an easier entry point for developers and researchers, particularly those in the GenAI community.ā A charter has been developed and the presenters introduced various community stakeholders who have committed to be part of this SIG.
Motion made to approve the proposed charter for a TGC SIG for Physical AI; approved by consensus.
C. TGC Funding Applications (2025 Funding Round)
This was the first TGC review discussion for the 2025 funding round. The Chair briefly described the funding requests received from each Project. An in-depth discussion on the request followed. Following this meeting will be a further period of discussion via asynchronous communication (primarily Discourse). A final decision on the amount to provide, and for what, to each project will be made in the meeting TGC-20250724-Regular.
Other Items/Announcements
Announced and welcomed new OSRA members:
New Gold member, Red Hat - rep Leo Rossetti
New Qualcomm Platinum rep, Na Song
New merch store and Kilted Kaiju merch now available
ROSCon 2025 updates - invitations and proposal deadlines
Adjournment - Geoff Biggs adjourned the meeting at 16:33 UTC.
ACTION ITEMS
The meeting minutes will be circulated to the TGC for review and approval before the next meeting by the TGC Chair.
The TGC Chair will follow up with Discourse threads to discuss the various funding requests asynchronously.
