Our explanatory and conceptual guides are written to provide a better understanding of how Canonical robotics technologies work. They enable you to expand your knowledge and become better at using and understanding Canonical’s technologies.
Ubuntu Core
Ubuntu Core is a version of the Ubuntu operating system designed and engineered for IoT and embedded systems.
Ubuntu Core updates itself and its applications automatically. Snap packages are used exclusively to create a confined and transaction-based system. Security and robustness are its key features, alongside being easy to install, easy to maintain, and easy to upgrade.
Ubuntu Core is great for robotics developers since it unlocks a complete infrastructure to reliably and securely deploy your robot, including automatic rollbacks on updates, delta updates, full disk encryption, and more. Ubuntu Core is ideal for embedded devices because it manages itself.
Download Ubuntu Core certified images for different boards>
Snaps
Snaps are containers that bundle an application and all its dependencies. As such, snaps offer a solution to build and distribute containerised robotics applications or any software.
Snaps are ideal for robotics developers,developers as they bundle all your dependencies and assets in one package, making applications installable on dozens of Linux distributions and across distro versions. You won’t even have to install anything else on your robots’ operating system, no dependencies, not even ROS if you are using it.
The creation of snaps can be integrated into your CI pipeline, making the updates effortless. Snaps can update automatically and transactionally, making sure the device is never broken.
Snapcraft, the tooling for building snaps, comes with native integrations through plugins and extensions dedicated to both ROS and ROS 2; developed and maintained by Canonical.
Learn more about Snaps for robotics>
IoT App Store
IoT App Store is a custom application store tailored to software distribution across fleets of devices. This store allows you to create, publish and distribute software on one centralised platform, with reliable over-the-air updates to your devices in a secure and validated way. The IoT App Store is adopted by a large number of enterprises around the world, with a variety of IoT use cases.
The IoT App Store is a commercial service. Canonical also offers a global store, open to all,all with a wealth of software available to you and your devices.
The IoT App Store supports robotics deployment and management by providing companies with a trusted and reliable infrastructure. It is suited for managing software on huge numbers of distributed devices. It is private to you, the users you assign to the store and the devices you own.
No network? No problem. The Store comes with a proxy to allow devices with restricted network access to connect to the global store, even through a firewall. We also provide the air-gapped mode of the Store Proxy, allowing devices to be completely disconnected from the internet to receive updates.