Sample ROS Publisher

Contains two sample publishers to check/verify connection between separate ros terminals.

scripts/pub_text.py : Publish a std_msgs::String
scripts/pub_marker.py : Publish a visualization_msgs::Marker

Basic Run nodes

rosrun docker_ros_test pub_text.py

and

rosrun docker_ros_test pub_marker.py

How to use ROS with docker

If you are a computer vision/robotics researcher or an engineerer checkout my blog post on what docker can do for you. HERE. Following is a checklist to get this sample nodes running on ros on docker.

Run the container image. You may use my images which has ros. hub.docker/mpkuse.

$(host) docker run -ti mpkuse/kusevisionkit:ros-kinetic-vins

Setup a catkin_ws. See ros-tutorials on how to setup a catkin_ws.

$(container) mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws/
$(container) catkin_make
$(container) source devel/setup.bash

Using docker inspect <container name> get the IP address of the container. Assuming the ip address of container is 172.17.0.2 and the hosts's ip-address is 172.17.0.1.
Edit the /etc/hosts file on the host and also on docker so that both docker-container and hosts knows each other. This is needed for roscore to work correctly. It looks something like below. Assuming deephorse is hostname of the host PC and 0ef6065d7b27 is the container id.

172.17.0.2 0ef6065d7b27
172.17.0.1 deephorse

Make sure container can ping to host with hostname and host can pind container with container id.

$(host) ping 0ef6065d7b27
$(container) ping deephorse.

Run roscore.

$(container) roscore
$(host) export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://0ef6065d7b27:11311/

Run a dummy node and see if you can receive messages on the host PC. You may like to use my dummy node.

$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$(container) git clone https://github.com/mpkuse/docker_ros_test
$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws
$(container) catkin_make
$(container) rosrun docker_ros_test pub_text.py

Verify the host can receive the messages.

$(host) rostopic list
/chatter
/rosout
/rosout_agg
$(host) rostopic echo /chatter
$(host) rostopic echo /chatter
data: hello world 1542596296.97
---
data: hello world 1542596297.07
---
.
.

Congratulations..!!! You have successfully setup ros on docker.