Usage

ROS Network

The ROS Network docking widget shows all discovered ROS masters. In order to detect other ROS masters, a special node (master_discovery) must be run. Otherwise, only the local ROS master will be shown.

You can initiate the discovery process with the Start button on the ROS Network widget. The discovery node can also be started on a remote host. Click on the Start button and enter the hostname or IP address in the dialog below.

Additionally, you can enter a network number (0..99) to create your own multi robot network. Thus you avoid the redundant synchronization to non-participant robots. The roscore will be run automatically via SSH if it is not currently available.

If no multicast communication is available use the run dialog in host description panel to run master_discovery and sets the static hosts parameter to the list of availabele hosts separated by comma. This also increases the network load!

The Refresh button lets you query the current state of the ROS masters from all running master_discovery nodes.

The icons and show whether a connection to the host exists. The color of the icon indicates the connection quality as determined by the master_discovery node.

The next to each host name indicates whether the parameter servers will be synchronized by the master_sync node. You can toggle ROS master synchronization by click on this icon. A synchronisation dialog with additional options is available by button on the host description panel.

The multimaster capabilities are disabled, if the local ROS_MASTER_URI is referenced to a remote host.

Host description panel

The host description panel displays the name and the time of the last update for the currently selected host. If the node manager finds a PNG image in node_manager_fkie/images with the same name as the host, it is used as icon. The icon can be also changed by double click on it or by setting the ROS parameter /robot_icon to an image file.

The host description panel contains additional buttons to update the state of the host or run ROS tools:

ROS Nodes view and control

The Nodes tab lists all nodes which are either running or available for launch in the current configuration. Running nodes have a green icon . They are monitored using their process ID, which is updated by the local master_discovery node. You have to run a master_discovery node on each host to ensure that information about all nodes is available in the network. If a node is registered with the master but has no associated process ID, the node is considered crashed and marked with . Note that only local nodes are pinged. Nodes which are running not at the same host with ROS Master are marked by . Crashes of these nodes cannot be detected.

As of now, the only reliable way to detect running nodes is by their registered topics and services. Thus, if a node has neither, it will never be shown as running.

In order to launch nodes, a configuration must be loaded. You can open roslaunch files. Nodes which are backed by a local configuration in this manner are marked with . If a node with the same name is listed in multiple launch files, you have choose one configuration when you launch the node.

Alternatively, you can use the default_cfg node to serve launch files to the local network. Nodes which are available through this mechanism are marked with . Different configurations are symbolized by icon.

Nodes control buttons:

ROS Topics view

The Topics tab shows all in ROS master registered subscriber and publisher. The count of these is shown in Publisher and Subscriber columns. The type of the ROS topic is also displayed. To get more information to the topic you can wait for a tooltip or use Description Dock.

You can search for a topic respectively his type using the filter row at the top.

Topic control buttons:

ROS Services view

The Services tab shows all in ROS master registered services. The type of the ROS service is also displayed. To get more information to the service you can wait for a tooltip or use Description Dock.

You can search for a service respectively his type using the filter row at the top.

Service control buttons:

ROS Parameter view

The Parameter tab shows all in ROS parameter server registered parameter. The value of the ROS parameter is also displayed. The parameter are not automatically requested or updated. Use get parameter button to load the parameter from ROS parameter server.

You can search for a parameter respectively his value using the filter row at the top.

Parameter control buttons:

Launch Dock

The Launch Dock can be used to find and load or edit the launch files. The root contains the paths defined by ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable. In addition, all subfolders are skipped, do not contain the *.launch files. On load, the launch file itself and all included files are added to QFileSystemWatcher. If one of this files will be changed, you will prompt to reload the launch file. In the root also will be shown a history of last five loaded launch files. When needed, the selected history files can be removed by pressing the Delete button.

Launch control buttons:

Launch Editor

Launch Editor is a simple text editor with roslaunch XML syntax highlighting.

In addition, the included files are open in a new tab by Ctrl+(left mouse click). If the file does not exists, it will be created. Of course, only if it is desired. You can also search in included file using the find dialog:

Double click on the file in the find dialog opens the file.

Description Dock

The Description Dock shows additional informations about selected nodes, topics or services.

Capabilities and additional description

Since the Node Manager tries to improve the overview and control of available ROS nodes on a roboter we added some parameter to allow grouping nodes to capabilities. The capability_group parameter adds a node to a specified group:

  <node name="node_manager" pkg="node_manager_fkie" type="nm" >
    <param name="capability_group" value="Management"/>
  </node>

It is possible to add a node to multiple groups using a prefix for capability_group, e.g.:

  <node name="node_manager" pkg="node_manager_fkie" type="nm" >
    <param name="capability_group" value="Management"/>
    <param name="1.capability_group" value="Node Manager"/>
  </node>

The description of a capability group is stored in a global capabilities parameter. This parameter is defined as rosparam and contains the list with all groups and their description. To describe a group adds a list with group name, group type, image and description. image is a relative path to node_manager_fkie package. The description can be coded as reStructeredText and contains also image references relative to node_manager_fkie package path. Since after loading the XML the new line separators are removed, you must enter \n to insert a new line.

   <rosparam param="capabilities">
      [
        ["Management",
         "core",
         "images/crystal_clear_app_network2.png",
         "The ``management`` group provides nodes needed to detect and synchronize
          other robots in the ROS network. These are:\n\n- Node Manager\n- Master
          Discovery\n- Master Synchronization"
        ]
      ]

    </rosparam>

The capability group do not change the namespace of the included ROS nodes.

Further parameter robots describes in same manner the roboter. The list must contains host name, robot type, displayed name, image and description:

  <rosparam param="robots">
    [
      ["tiderko",
       "Workstation",
       "tiderko",
       "images/veryicon_devcom_workstation.png",
       "Workstation\n\n|ws|\n\n.. |ws| image::
        images/veryicon_devcom_workstation.png\n"
      ]
    ]
  </rosparam>

This description will also shown in Description Dock and tooltip.

Default Configuration

The default configuration of a robot is represented by default_cfg node. This node loads a launch file and offers services to run contained nodes. It also offers the additional capabilities description extraceted from the launch file. If a new host is discovered or the ROS Master state is changed, the Node Manager searches for node, which offers default configuration by parsing the service names for list_nodes. The nodes provided by default_cfg are added to the Nodes View with icon in the Cfgs column. This nodes can be launched without loading a configuration.

Furthermore based on detected capabilities the Capability View will be created.

The nodes with remote machine tag are ignored.

Capability View

The Capability View shows tabularly the detected robots and their capabilities. The view is created based on the running default configurations of corresponding robots. Each available capability provides buttons to start or stop these.

Click on the header to show the description in Description Dock.

Getting started

Although the node is written in Python we need to run rosmake to generate message and service types:

rosmake master_discovery_fkie default_cfg_fkie

Run the node:

rosrun node_manager_fkie nm

Interface

The services of master_discovery_fkie and default_cfg_fkie are detected automatically by whose names.

Subscribed Topics

• Subscribes to this topic to get the changes in the ROS network. The name of the topic will be detect automatically by type. All found fopics are subscribed.

• Subscribes this topic to get the link quality informations to other ROS master. The name of the topic will be detect automatically by type. All found fopics are subscribed.

Key Bindings