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.

birromer/ros-intervals-docker

ROS Noetic Docker Intervals Edition