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Rclex

Rclex is a ROS 2 client library for Elixir.

This library lets you perform basic ROS 2 behaviors by calling out from Elixir code into the RCL (ROS Client Library) API, which uses the ROS 2 common hierarchy.

Additionally, publisher-subscriber (PubSub) communication between nodes and associated callback functions are executed by tasks, which are part of a lightweight process model. This enables generation of and communication between a large number of fault-tolerant nodes while suppressing memory load.

what-is-ros-2

What is ROS 2

ROS (Robot Operating System) is a next-generation Robot development platform. In both ROS and ROS 2, each functional unit is exposed as a node, and by combining these nodes you can create different robot applications. Additionally, communication between nodes uses a PubSub model where publisher and subscriber exchange information by specifying a common topic name.

The biggest difference between ROS and ROS 2 is that the DDS (Data Distribution Service) protocol was adopted for communication, and the library was divided in a hierarchical structure, allowing for the creation of ROS 2 client libraries in various languages. This has allowed for the creation of a robot application library in Elixir.

For details on ROS 2, see the official ROS 2 documentation.

Currently, we use the following environment as the main development target:

  • Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa)
  • ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy
  • Elixir 1.12.3-otp-24
  • Erlang/OTP 24.1.5

For other environments used to check the operation of this library, please refer to here.

The pre-built Docker images are available at Docker Hub. You can also try the power of Rclex with it easily. Please check "Docker Environment" section for details.

installation

Installation

rclex is available in Hex.

You can install this package into your project by adding rclex to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:rclex, "~> 0.7.1"}
  ]
end

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs.
You can find the docs at https://hexdocs.pm/rclex.

usage

Usage

Currently, the Rclex API allows for the following:

  1. The ability to create a large number of publishers sending to the same topic.
  2. The ability to create large numbers of each combination of publishers, topics, and subscribers.

Please reference examples here. Also note the usage alongside the sample code.

enhance-devepoment-experience

Enhance devepoment experience

This section describes the information mainly for developers.

docker-environment

Docker environment

This repository provides a docker compose environment for library development with Docker.

As mentioned above, pre-built Docker images are available at Docker Hub, which can be used to easily try out Rclex. You can set the environment variable $RCLEX_DOCKER_TAG to the version of the target environment. Please refer to here for the available environments.

# optional: set to the target environment (default `latest`)
export RCLEX_DOCKER_TAG=latest
# create and start the container
docker compose up -d
# execute the container (with the workdir where this repository is mounted)
docker compose exec -w /root/rclex rclex_docker /bin/bash
# stop the container
docker compose down

automatic-execution-of-mix-test-etc

Automatic execution of mix test, etc.

mix test.watch is introduced to automatically run unit test mix test and code formatting mix format every time the source code was editted.

mix test.watch

confirmation-of-operation

Confirmation of operation

To check the operation of this library, we prepare rclex/rclex_connection_tests to test the communication with the nodes implemented with Rclcpp.

cd /path/to/yours
git clone https://github.com/rclex/rclex
git clone https://github.com/rclex/rclex_connection_tests
cd /path/to/yours/rclex_connection_tests
./run-all.sh

In GitHub Actions, we perform CI on multiple environments at Pull Requests. HOwever, we cannot guarantee operation in all of these environments.

maintainers-and-developers-including-past

Maintainers and developers (including past)