Samsung Research America’s Open-Source Robotics, Engineering Lead Steve Macenski was awarded by the global Robot Operating System (ROS) community top awards at the 2021 ROS Developer’s Day conference. This is the second year in a row Samsung Research has received awards from the robotics community.

Steve Macenski speaking at TechCrunch 2020

Steve Macenski was awarded, for the second consecutive year, the Top Developer Award for his on-going contributions to ROS and ROS2. He is the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) representative for Samsung and leads the community Navigation Working Group. As a core leader in ROS, he focuses on building highly reliable mobile robotics technology, community engagement, and mentorship. This award highlights his continued technical achievements in the field of robotics, including mapping, path planning, control, and architectural innovations. It also speaks to the success of his leadership in building a vibrant community. Steve’s initiatives have resulted in a community containing hundreds of developers, mentoring opportunities, and hundreds of contributions to high impact projects.

Nav2 Project Logo

Further, the community project, Nav2 (formerly known as Navigation2) was awarded the Top Software Award. This project is led by Steve Macenski of Samsung Research America with close collaboration with Alexey Merzlyakov of Samsung Research Russia. This project aims to provide the highest quality mobile robot navigation solution in the world. Today, it supports Ackermann, Differential Drive, Omnidirectional, and Legged robots with a wide range of sensing capabilities. In the last year, innovations in filters, path planning, control, and behavior trees have been made, which are enabling the next generation mobile robots. It is being used by dozens of companies, researchers, and hobbyists all over the world.

Samsung Research’s Open Source Group is a leader in the next generation of robotics technology. They focus on developing the missing technologies holding back new and innovative applications of robotics. Further, this work is made to be well documented with guides and tutorials such that they can be easily integrated into any project. This focus on education and community has earned a strong reputation for Samsung in the ROS community. “[Steve’s] work for educational purposes and attitude in promoting robotics are very valuable and remarkable.” said Markus Buchholz, Principle Software Engineer at Canrig Robotics, “Frankly speaking and open minded [people] … help others to grow and live better.”