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microblx - ROS connector block

Table of Contents

Overview

This repository contains the ubxros function block that can be used to connect a microblx composition to ROS topics. The principal use-case is to connect a minimal, hard real-time control or signal processing core to larger non real-time ROS application.

This works as follows: the ubxros block is configured with the topics you want to publish or subscribe to. During initialization, this block creates microblx ports that are linked to the respective ROS topics. This means messages received on sub topics are written to output ports, and those read from input ports published to pub topics.

To preserve hard real-time properties of core blocks, it is important to:

  • connect to the ubxros ports using lock-free connections (this is the default for .usc compositions)
  • trigger ubxros blocks with a separate (active) trigger like ptrig)

For more background information, please check out the microblx docs.

Installing

Dependencies

To build this package, the following dependencies need to be installed:

  • microblx (at least v0.9.0)
  • ROS1 (tested with Debian bullseye)
  • KDL (e.g. liborocos-kdl-dev or from src)
  • microblx-kdl-types (git). This adds support for basic KDL types in microblx.

The latter two are optional. If either of these is /not/ found, no support for geometry msgs will be available.

Building

$ git clone git@github.com:kmarkus/microblx-ros.git
...
$ cd microblx-ros
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ../
...
building geometry_msgs support
...
$ make 
[ 20%] Generating hexarr/types/ubxros_conn.h.hexarr
Scanning dependencies of target ubxros
[ 40%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/ubxros.dir/src/ros_std.cpp.o
[ 60%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/ubxros.dir/src/ros_kdl.cpp.o
[ 80%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/ubxros.dir/src/ubxros.cpp.o
[100%] Linking CXX shared library ubxros.so
[100%] Built target ubxros
$ sudo make install
...

check it's there:

$ ubx-modinfo show ubxros -p kdl_types
module ubxros
 license: BSD-3-Clause
 
  types:
    struct ubxros_conn, sz=296, nil
	
  blocks:
   ubxros [state: preinit, steps: 0] (type: cblock, prototype: false, attrs: )
     configs:
       connections [struct ubxros_conn] nil // microblx-ROS connections

Usage

ubxros is a /dynamic interface block/ that according to its configuration will create ports to publish/subscribe to/from ROS topics

A complete, minimal example can be found here: example.usc.

Running the example

Before starting, run a roscore. Also make sure to run ubx-log in a separate terminal to be able to see if anything goes wrong.

Now launch the composition:

$ ubx-launch -c usc/example.usc
...

Testing the publisher

$ rostopic list
/listen_int32
/rand_double
/rosout
/rosout_agg

$ rostopic echo /rand_double 
data: 0.8677190964591368
...

Testing the subscriber

To test the subscriber, first publish some dummy data:

$ rostopic pub -r 10 /listen_int32 std_msgs/Int32 5150
...

And view the data exported to the mqueue:

$ ubx-mq list
be345fddda975b690acfd15b4e22d4e1  1    listen_int32_out
...

$ ubx-mq read listen_int32_out
5150
5150
5150
...

Configuration

The main configuration is connections, which is an array of struct ubxros_conn types:

{
	 name="rosbridge1",
	 config = {
	    connections = {
	       { topic = "rand_double", dir='P', ubx_type="double" },
	       { topic = "listen_int32", dir='S', ubx_type="int32_t" },
	    }
	 }
},

Legal values are

{ 
	topic = TOPIC_NAME,
	dir = P|S, 
	ubx_type = UBX_TYPE,
	queue_size = ROS_QUEUE_SIZE,
	latch = 0|1
},

See the roscpp documentation for the meaning of these attributes.

Connecting

With the above configuration, upon initialization the ubxros block will create ports named according to the topic. Writing to the P ports will publish the value on the respective topic. Conversely, if values are received on the S topic, these will be simply output on the respective microblx port.

connections = {
    { src="rand_double1.out", tgt="rosbridge1.rand_double" },
	{ src="rosbridge1.listen_int32", tgt="listen_int32_out" },
},

Triggering

For subscriber topics, the ubxros block has setup callbacks that directly output the data on the respective ports. Publishing to topics takes place in the ubxros step hook. It is the responsibility of the user to add a trigger block (e.g. ptrig) to periodically publish output data.

Design Rationale

It is tempting to implement the ROS connector block as an microblx iblock that forwards reads/writes to the respective topic. The major downside of this would be that the writing/reading takes place in the context of the reading or writing cblock, thereby affecting its real-time behavior.

To avoid this, the ubxros block was developed as a standalone cblock. This way, it can be decoupled from the hard real-time domain via lock-free connections and be triggered by a dedicated lower priority trigger.

Limitations

  • No support for the MultiArray message types yet. It's probably straightforward to add these.

  • No support for services or actions.

License

BSD-3-Clause

Acknowledgement

  • Parts of this early microblx_ros_bridge were a useful source of inspiration.

  • Development of microblx-ros was supported by the European H2020 project RobMoSys via the COCORF (Component Composition for Real-time Function blocks) Integrated Technical Project.