I suspect it just happened to be at the right place at the right time, worked well for a set of users in the robotics community and built up strong network effects there.
This is a pretty common story. Python became very successful in a similar way. I have seen things like flight critical software written in Python not because Python is a good language for it (if I heard this 15 years ago I would laugh), but because Python became a de-facto standard for prototyping in the domain due to its libraries, tools and bindings and solving a realtime challenge for an existing prototype is often an easier lift than rebuilding it from scratch. My 2c.
This is a pretty common story. Python became very successful in a similar way. I have seen things like flight critical software written in Python not because Python is a good language for it (if I heard this 15 years ago I would laugh), but because Python became a de-facto standard for prototyping in the domain due to its libraries, tools and bindings and solving a realtime challenge for an existing prototype is often an easier lift than rebuilding it from scratch. My 2c.