Robot Operating System (ROS) Fundamentals

Mr Tan Woei Ming is the trainer for Tertiary Courses' Robot Operating System courses and works at Tertiary Infotech as an Instructor, Software Developer and Agentic Automation specialist. He combines First-Class Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from NTU with a Master of Intelligent Systems from NUS, giving him a well-rounded view of robotics, from the sensors and embedded hardware a robot depends on to the intelligent software that drives its behaviour. His industry experience at Micron Technology, where he served as a Data Scientist and later Data Science Lead, involved leading AI initiatives in predictive analytics, automation and process optimisation in the semiconductor and manufacturing industries, sectors in which robotics and automation increasingly work side by side. He is an ACLP-certified trainer.

Robot Operating System (ROS) Fundamentals teaches learners how to build and program robots with the industry-standard open-source framework used in research, manufacturing, logistics and autonomous vehicles. Mr Tan begins with how ROS supports system integration, then guides learners through its core tools: workspaces and packages, nodes and launch files, topics and messages, publishers and subscribers, services, actions and data recording. Learners next explore LIDAR and SLAM, seeing how a robot senses distance and maps its surroundings while tracking its own position, before the course closes with robotics system integration, bringing these components together on a robot. Mr Tan's approach is to connect every software concept to the hardware it controls, so learners understand not only which commands to run but why the system is designed as it is. The class is hands-on and supportive, and suits engineers, developers and technically curious learners taking their first step into robotics software. Learners leave with a solid base for more advanced ROS 2 work, including navigation and robot applications.