ROS Noetic Docker Intervals Edition

So, installing ROS is quite tiresome and doing it many times is borderline torture, so with this pain in mind and inspired by turlucode's repository I ended up making this image with all the software that I use for my research and development.

The image ready for pulling is available here. Might not be up to date with the repo.

It includes, among other things:

• Ubuntu 20.04, as base image
• ROS Noetic, as it is the core of this thing
• NEW ROS2 Foxy, as the second beating heart of this thing
• OpenCV, the latest build for image processing
• Ibex and Codac, for interval analysis/constraint programming
• A shared folder with the host computer
• Tmux configuration and layout ready for development, for getting into action in less than 10 seconds
• Support for working with the NAO robot
• and some customization for my own pleasure

You'll be able to find everything extra in the assets/ folder, including vim, tmux, zsh and xdefaults for urxvt terminal.

Most of the details can be understood from the original repo, but I must point that it is a simplified version that does not access a dedicated graphics card nor has out-of-the-box customizability - gotta edit the files as you wish.

In order to build it you need only to be inside the folder with the Dockerfile and run

docker build -t birromer/ros-noetic:robot base

For ease of use, I edited a bit of the previously existing functions and added the following to my .zshrc file.

ros-start-custom(){
docker run --rm -it --privileged --net=host --ipc=host --env="DISPLAY" \
    --device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri \
    -v "/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" \
    -v $HOME/.Xauthority:/home/$(id -un)/.Xauthority -e XAUTHORITY=/home/$(id -un)/.Xauthority \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/robotics:/home/$(id -un)/ros \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/mega/datasets:/home/$(id -un)/ros/data \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/Documents/CoppeliaSim:/home/$(id -un)/ros/software/coppelia_sim \
    -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
    -e DOCKER_USER_NAME=$(id -un) \
    -e DOCKER_USER_ID=$(id -u) \
    -e DOCKER_USER_GROUP_NAME=$(id -gn) \
    -e DOCKER_USER_GROUP_ID=$(id -g) \
    -e ROS_IP=127.0.0.1 \
    birromer/ros-noetic:robot
}

ros-start(){
docker run --rm -it --privileged --net=host --ipc=host --env="DISPLAY" \
    --device=/dev/dri:/dev/dri \
    -v "/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" \
    -v $HOME/.Xauthority:/home/robot/.Xauthority \
    -e XAUTHORITY=/home/robot/.Xauthority \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/robotics:/home/robot/ros \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/mega/datasets:/home/robot/ros/data \
    -v /home/$(id -un)/Documents/CoppeliaSim:/home/robot/ros/software/coppelia_sim \
    -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
    -e ROS_IP=127.0.0.1 \
    -e DOCKER_USER_NAME=robot \
    -e DOCKER_USER_ID=$(id -u) \
    -e DOCKER_USER_GROUP_NAME=$(id -gn) \
    -e DOCKER_USER_GROUP_ID=$(id -g) \
    birromer/ros-noetic-intervals:latest
}

ros-connect(){
    docker exec -ti $(docker ps -aq --filter ancestor=birromer/ros-noetic-intervals:latest --filter status=running) zsh
}

ros-clean(){
    docker rm $(docker ps -aq --filter ancestor=birromer/ros-noetic-intervals:latest --filter status=exited)
}

In those lines I set the shared folder as ros/, which is where I have my catkin workspace, simulator stuff, etc. I also mount another folder inside it for my use, but I imagine you'll need to set it up differently.

After sourcing the your new shell configuration all you gotta do is run ros-start and a tmux session will start. In case of doubt the command key has been remapped to C-a and the ? still works for help.

I added a robot user for managing packages that broke when installed with root and is accessible with ros-start, but you can preserve your user passwords and some configurations with the ros-start-custom command.

After running ros-start, it is possible to launch a series of terminals on tmux with sudo tmuxp load ros/tmux_ros.yaml.

As both ROS and ROS2 coexist in the latest version, the commands ros-env and ros2-env may be used to change the environment variables needed for each, they are defined in the loaded .zshrc file.