Recommended stable version of ROS for industrial robots as of 2017

Question

I've been working on ROS enabled robots since 2 years and I have used ROS indigo on Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty . Quite a bit after getting exposed to ROS and interest towards the robotic automation I've started researching on industrial robots and their major significance today on manufacturing automation. So to kick start I would like to know which version and combination of ROS and Gazebo/V-REP is most recommended for research and business perspective considering the available instant support as well.

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Originally posted by sai krishna on ROS Answers with karma: 111 on 2017-04-06

Post score: 0

Answer 1

As of 2017, ROS Kinetic is the LTS version of ROS, with an expected EOL on May 2021. Keep in mind, that even if some ROS distributions continue to be supported, their EOL comes with the EOL of the supported Ubuntu version. So, this is mainly an Ubuntu problem, but still, when aiming for the most recommended ROS distribution, you should aim for the latest LTS version. You can read some quick info for all ROS Distributions here.

Regarding Gazebo, since you are interested in this simulator, I would suggest to use ROS Kinetic which is compatible with the much improved Gazebo 7.

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Originally posted by gstavrinos with karma: 641 on 2017-04-07

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by sai krishna on 2017-04-07:
I understand the stability of the ROS kinetic version but I was concerned only towards industrial robots and the if possible for ROS- Industrial version compatibility .