Running ROS nodes without roscore
I am currently working on a project where I would like to take a ROS node , in particular the Laser Pipeline node, and integrate it into our current source code maintained by Visual Studios on Windows 7. Our goal is to create a 3D composite map from data read in from a laser to help our MANUS Assistive Robotic Manipulator (ARM) navigate better. The solution we came up with is to mount a Hokuyo Laser onto our MANUS ARM. Over the past couple weeks I have began to familiarize my self with how the laser_pipeline node works on Ubuntu and have successfully read in data from the laser and turned it into a 3D composite map. Now that the beginning phase of this process is over a few questions have come up. Is it possible to run ROS nodes without roscore?
I recently sent an email to the ROS team asking them for possible solutions and they suggested eliminating every reference to ROS from the source code, replacing it by your own custom code, or running ROS on Windows. Replacing all the references seems like a daunting feat because every header file has references to more header files and so on. Our goal is to have one integrated application so running ros on Windows is a possible last resort. Are there any other suggestions out there?