rapros: A ROS Package for Rapid Prototyping

ROS framework lacks of an internal tool to design or test control algorithms and therefore developers have to test their algorithms on-line, directly on the robotic platform they are working with. This is not always safe and possible, and a rapid prototyping tool can help during the design phase. Users can develop their algorithms directly on the controller board and safely test them in a simulated scenario. Although some rapid prototyping tools exist in the ROS community, none of them take Simulink® into consideration. In this work the authors provide an open source Rapid Prototyping tool which integrates ROS and Simulink. The proposed package is useful for control designers, who are frequently used to exploit Simulink features for control deployment. The tool can be downloaded from https://github.com/gionatacimini/rapros.