Bridge between micro-ROS applications and ROS 2
Micro-ROS, whose default implementation is based on eProsima's
Micro XRCE-DDS middleware, is composed of client applications
which interact with the ROS 2 world by means of an Agent.
This agent keeps tracks of the entities created by means of
requests performed on the microcontroller side, and uses them
to communicate with the ROS 2 dataspace.
Being an extension of the Micro XRCE-DDS Agent, the micro-ROS
agent supports being run by the user like this:
$ micro-ros-agent --help
In addition, the Agent supports running as a service that can be
enabled with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent daemon=true
If the service is enabled, by default it uses the udp4
transport on
port 8888. The following parameters can be changed (these are
specific to the service, the micro-ros-agent
command simply
takes command-line arguments, but the capabilities are the same):
transport
. Supported transports are udp4
, udp6
, tcp4
,
tcp6
, serial
, and pseudoterminal
. Default is udp4
. Change
with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent transport="new transport"
middleware
. Supported kinds of middleware are ced
, rtps
, and
dds
. Default is dds
. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent middleware="new middleware"
verbosity
. Supported verbosity levels are 0-6, defaulting to 4.
Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent verbosity="selected verbosity"
discovery
. Enable or disable the discovery server. Defaults to
"false". Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent discovery="true or false"
discovery-port
. Port on which the discovery server (see above)
listens. Defaults to 7400. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent discovery-port="selected port"
p2p-port
. Port to use for the P2P profile. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent p2p-port="selected port"
port
. Port on which the agent listens. Only applicable to one of
the UDP or TCP transports (see above). Defaults to 8888. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent port="selected port"
baudrate
. Baud rate to use when accessing serial ports. Only
applicable when using the serial
or pseudoterminal
transport.
Defaults to 115200. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent baudrate="baud rate"
device
. The serial device to use. Only applicable when using the
serial
or pseudoterminal
transport. Change with:
$ snap set micro-ros-agent device="device path"
When using the snap with a serial device, some steps need to be taken
in order to establish a successful connection:
Refresh your local installation of the snap core
package:
$ sudo snap refresh core --edge
Enable the hotplug feature and restart the snapd
daemon:
$ sudo snap set core experimental.hotplug=true
$ sudo systemctl restart snapd
After plugging the microcontroller to the serial port, execute
the snap interface serial-port
command. You should see something
like this:
name: serial-port
summary: allows accessing a specific serial port
plugs:
- micro-ros-agent
slots:
- snapd:cp2102cp2109uartbrid (allows accessing a specific serial port)
Connect your snap image to the desired serial port (replace accordingly):
$ snap connect micro-ros-agent:serial-port snapd:cp2102cp2109uartbrid
After this, you can execute your snap as usual,
using micro-ros-agent serial -d <serial-dev>
.