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Tag Glossary

This page is the controlled vocabulary reference for article tags. The goal is not to create a perfect taxonomy. The goal is to keep tags consistent enough that the site remains explorable as it grows.

Core Rules

  • Keep tags lowercase.
  • Prefer singular forms unless the plural is the standard term in ROS usage.
  • Prefer one stable term over multiple near-synonyms.
  • Use tags to help discovery, not to restate the full title.
  • Reuse existing tags before adding new ones.

Canonical Families

Platform and Distribution

  • ros2: use on almost every ROS 2 article.
  • jazzy: use when the article is explicitly Jazzy-specific or version-sensitive.

Major Technical Areas

  • navigation
  • perception
  • hardware
  • software
  • devops
  • simulation
  • localization
  • mapping
  • slam
  • urdf
  • tf
  • rviz
  • nav2: the default tag for Nav2-specific content.
  • behavior-trees: prefer this over inventing new BT synonyms for general tree content.
  • bt: reserve for articles that are specifically about node semantics, XML structure, or plugin-level BehaviorTree.CPP work.
  • planner: use for planner-specific leaves.
  • controller: use for controller-specific leaves.
  • costmaps: use for costmap and costmap-layer material.
  • recovery: use for recovery and failure-handling content.

Robot Modeling and State Estimation

  • robot-model: use for structural robot-description topics.
  • odometry
  • sensor-fusion
  • ekf
  • ukf
  • frames: use only when frame placement or extrinsics are the real topic.

Sensors and Perception Products

  • lidar
  • vision
  • depth-camera
  • pointcloud: prefer this over pointclouds.
  • imu
  • camera

Operations and Tooling

  • testing
  • debugging
  • diagnostics
  • monitoring
  • performance
  • rosbag2
  • docker
  • systemd
  • gazebo
  • networking
  • dds
  • multi-machine

Preferred Choices for Common Near-Duplicates

  • Prefer rviz over rviz2 unless the ROS 2 branding itself is the point.
  • Prefer pointcloud over pointclouds.
  • Prefer controller over controllers.
  • Prefer workspace over workspaces unless the article is specifically about multiple workspace layers.
  • Prefer behavior-trees for general topic tagging and add bt only when the article is specifically about BT implementation details.
  • Prefer bt over btcpp when the topic is BehaviorTree.CPP implementation detail rather than a broader autonomy introduction.

When To Add a New Tag

Add a new tag only if at least one of these is true:

  • The article would be hard to discover without it.
  • The concept is already becoming a recurring cluster.
  • The new tag is more precise than an overloaded existing one.

If a new tag is added, keep it simple, lowercase, and likely to be reusable on future articles.