GSoC Inquiry: New Contributor interested in ROS2 projects.

[prathamv0811]

Hi team,

I’m a student interested in contributing to JdeRobot for GSoC 2026. I have a background in ROS 2 and have been exploring your projects, especially the Robotics Academy.

I’m new to open-source contributions and would like guidance on the best way to get started, so that I can make meaningful contributions and increase my chances of participating in GSoC.

I also wanted to ask: apart from ROS 2, what other technologies and skill sets are most valuable for contributing to JdeRobot projects? For example, should I focus on C++/Python, Gazebo/Ignition, computer vision, reinforcement learning, or web development tools that are commonly used in your repositories?

I’m really excited about getting involved and contributing to the JdeRobot community. Looking forward to your advice on how I can start

Thank you,
Pratham Jain

[jmplaza]

Hi @prathamv0811 ,

nice to meet you. good to know your interest in contributing to JdeRobot org. Current GSoC-2025 is active, selected candidates are now finishing their projects. For instance: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jderobot_congratulations-ashish-ramesh-for-your-successful-activity-7363250016393510912-lzaQ.

A good way to start contributing is to get familiar with our software products. In particular, RoboticsAcademy is the most active one and a priority project. The best way to start contributing is to USE RoboticsAcademy (solve and provide feedback) about the exercises already available in current release (FollowLine, ObstacleAvoidance, VacuumCleaner, LocalizedVacuumCleaner...). They use the browser as the only GUI (for source code editing and for exercise monitoring), and a docker image for running the Gazebo simulator (it is named RADI= RoboticsAcademy Docker Image). The docker image already includes a Django webserver for providing the exercise webpages. Please use this GitHub Discussions for questions (you will receive support there) and report any detected bug creating an issue for each one in the RoboticsAcademy repository . Feel free to share videos in the Discussions or mentioning @JdeRobot in twitter of your solutions to those exercises in operation. ROS and Gazebo are maybe the most useful technologies for contributing.

In addition, in JdeRobot community we have a Robotics Club, on it we help students to improve their robotics abilities through periodic meetings with JdeRobot mentors, experts on robotics, and collaboration on some specific projects. Each member of the Club has his/her own repository and blog, beyond working on official code repositories too. Take a look at Sakshay's blog The main advantage on your side of joining the Robotics Club is to learn more robotics abilities, contribute to nice open source projects and to receive mentoring from robotics experts, for free. After doing a good betatesting of RoboticsAcademy you may be invited to the RoboticsClub and added to our Slack #roboticsacademy channel for RoboticsAcademy developers, if interested.

What do you think?

Best regards,

[prathamv0811]

Hello sir ,

Thank you for the detailed guidance and for sharing the pathway to get started with JdeRobot. I’m very interested in contributing and learning through RoboticsAcademy.

I will begin by setting up the RADI Docker image and working on the current exercises (FollowLine, ObstacleAvoidance, VacuumCleaner, LocalizedVacuumCleaner). I’ll make sure to share feedback, report any bugs I encounter, and document my solutions as suggested.

I’m also eager to learn more about ROS, Gazebo, and Docker in the process, and I would be glad to engage in GitHub Discussions and Issues actively. Joining the Robotics Club in the future also sounds like a great opportunity to grow my robotics skills and collaborate with the community.

Thank you once again for the opportunity and the guidance. I’m excited to get started and contribute meaningfully.

Best regards,
Pratham Jain