Interfacing DYNAMIXEL actuators to ROS
One of the latest smart actuators available on the market is DYNAMIXEL, which is manufactured by a company called Robotis. The DYNAMIXEL servos are available in various versions, some of which are shown in the following figure:
These smart actuators have complete support in ROS, and clear documentation is also available for them.
The official ROS wiki page of DYNAMIXEL is at http://wiki.ros.org/dynamixel_controllers/Tutorials.