As explained in the previous post, the need to switch to ROS2 was essential for moving forward with a truly distributed architecture. In this post, we will take a look at how we can install and configure ROS2 on our target system.Please note, we will be publishing this tutorial with our target system in mind, which is a computer running Ubuntu18.04 LTS, having a 5th generation Intel core i3 and 12 GB of RAM.
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Congratulations, you have now successfully configured ROS for your target system. It’s time to get to know the fundamental features of ROS. There are two main styles of development in ROS - we can either write everything from scratch, which for a small application is doable, but defeats the purpose of using ROS when we apply this for a large(complex) system. We will focus on the first approach here.
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ROS (Robot Operating System) is a software environment (i.e., middleware) providing a set of tools to connect multiple parts of a robotic setup. It offers nice features to interface with a wide range of sensors and actuators. However, it does not natively provide any strict real-time guarantees. Yet, many modern-day robots have a strong need to achieve a deterministic, time-bounded behaviour (e.g., mobile robot collision avoidance).
The aim of the project is to determine how real-time capabilities can be brought to ROS. The first step would be to identify the existing real-time extensions, and carry out a comparative study about each of them. The next step would be to setup the installation process for a real-time environment using ROS and Linux/Xenomai. The final step will consist in developing and testing real-time ROS nodes.
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The first thing we want on our target is an Operating System. Nowadays, the easiest and the most disposable option for installing Ubuntu is from a bootable thumb drive(4GB+). For that purpose, all we need is an image of the OS, a thumb drive, and we are ready to go.
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Xenomai is a real-time OS using Linux as a background task. Linux is preempted as a simple task. With Xenomai, the idea of impossible preemption, handlers, is no longer valid. Tasks, handled by Xenomai, are guaranteed to have a hard real-time execution.
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