Live research index — updated weekly

Every ROS paper,
one living database.

An open, continuously updated index of every research paper built on the Robot Operating System — classified across contribution type, research domain, application field, and 139 topic labels. Companion dataset to “ROS 2 in a Nutshell: A Survey”, ACM Computing Surveys.

Explore the papers Timelines & insights
Research papers
ROS 2 papers
Curated packages
Research subdomains
Years covered
The survey taxonomy

One map of all ROS research

Every paper is classified along four independent dimensions — what it contributes, which robotics problem it addresses, where it deploys, and which techniques it uses. Click anything to filter the papers below, or see the full taxonomy figure from the paper.

ROS 2 Survey Taxonomy

Contribution Type

How each ROS 2 paper contributes — an application, work on ROS itself, or an ecosystem artifact.

Core / ecosystem subtypes

Application Context

Where application papers deploy: industry vertical and robot platform.

Application fields
Robot platforms

Fine-Grained Keywords

Cross-domain technique tags — 139 labels applied independently of the architectural classification.

Research Domain

The functional robotics-stack domain each paper addresses — four domains, expanded below.

Paper explorer

Search the literature

Filter by title, year, ROS version, taxonomy, deployment context, or any of the 139 topic labels. Click a row for the abstract and full metadata.

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Paper DOI Year ROS Taxonomy Deployment Labels
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Ecosystem

More than papers

ROS research stands on a stack of simulators, planners, middleware, and tooling — Gazebo, Nav2, MoveIt 2, Isaac, CARLA, micro-ROS and hundreds more. We track the packages the literature builds with, and how that ecosystem evolved.

Browse 176 packages Ecosystem timelines

The ROS ecosystem: Gazebo, Nav2, MoveIt 2, NVIDIA Isaac, CARLA, Docker, Ubuntu and more