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Configuring the Rapp Manager

Overview

This tutorial shows how to configure a robot app manager launch for a standalone ros system.

If you haven't already, make sure you have installed either the rocon_app_platform environment, or the full rocon environment itself.

Launch Modules

The standalone.launch launches the core rocon app manager node as well as (optionally) a few highly correlated modules that work with the rapp manager. In the following list [C] indicates core modules and [O] optional modules:

• [C] Rocon App Manager - the rocon app manager itself.

• [C] Rocon Master Info - advertising your ros master information (see rocon_master_info

• [O] Capabilities - if your rapps depend on capabilities this can be conveniently configured from here.

• [O] Zeroconf - advertise your ros master on the lan so other tools can easily find the rapp manager

• [O] Interactions - load up rocon_interactions to enable pairing with the rapp manager.

Launch Args

There are also many args that can be set. Most of these are fairly straightforward and the comments in standalone.launch should suffice.

Customising a Launcher

To configure your own standalone rapp manager launcher, simply include the original and configure the required args.

Whitelisting your Rapps

The most important args are probably the whitelist/blacklist controls where you can constrain the rapps on the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH that are discoverable by the rapp manager. e.g.

   1 <launch>
   2   <include file="$(find rocon_app_manager)/launch/standalone.launch">
   3     <arg name="rapp_package_whitelist" default="[rocon_apps, my_rapps]"/> <!-- comma separated list of package names -->
   4   </include>
   5 </launch>

A Custom Icon

Use an icon with the following specifications:

• Format: png, jpg

• Dimension: 120x120 recommended

The dimension is not a hard constraint - if it is different it will be rescaled. An example:

Place the icon in a package of your choice and then pass it to the app manager as roslaunch argument specified by resource name (package/filename pair). e.g.

   1 <launch>
   2   <include file="$(find rocon_app_manager)/launch/standalone.launch">
   3     <arg name="robot_name" value="barbarossa" />
   4     <arg name="robot_icon" value="rocon_app_manager/cybernetic_pirate.png" />
   5   </include>
   6 </launch>