AWS RoboMaker Sample Application - CloudWatch Monitoring

Monitor health and operational metrics for a fleet of robots in a simulated home using AWS CloudWatch Metrics and AWS CloudWatch Logs. Streamed metrics include speed, distance to nearest obstacle, distance to current goal, robot CPU utilization, and RAM usage.

It demonstrates how to emit metrics and logs to AWS CloudWatch to monitor your robots.

RoboMaker sample applications include third-party software licensed under open-source licenses and is provided for demonstration purposes only. Incorporation or use of RoboMaker sample applications in connection with your production workloads or a commercial products or devices may affect your legal rights or obligations under the applicable open-source licenses. Source code information can be found here.

Requirements

ROS2 Dashing - Other versions of ROS2 may work, however they have not been tested
Colcon - Used for building and bundling the application.

AWS Setup

AWS Credentials

You will need to create an AWS Account and configure the credentials to be able to communicate with AWS services. You may find AWS Configuration and Credential Files helpful.

AWS Permissions

To run this application you will need an IAM user with the following permissions:

   logs:PutLogEvents
   logs:DescribeLogStreams 
   logs:CreateLogStream 
   logs:CreateLogGroup

You can find instructions for creating a new IAM Policy here. In the JSON tab paste the following policy document:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "CloudWatchRobotRole",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudwatch:PutMetricData",
        "logs:PutLogEvents",
        "logs:DescribeLogStreams",
        "logs:CreateLogStream",
        "logs:CreateLogGroup"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Build

Pre-build commands

sudo apt-get update
rosdep update

Robot

cd robot_ws
rosws update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
colcon build

Simulation

cd simulation_ws
rosws update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
colcon build

Run

The TURTLEBOT3_MODEL environment variable must be set when running the simulation application (not needed for robot application). Valid values are burger, waffle, and waffle_pi.

Launch the application with the following commands:

Running Robot Application on a Robot

source robot_ws/install/local_setup.sh
ros2 launch cloudwatch_robot deploy_rotate.launch.py

Running Robot Application Elsewhere
```
source robot_ws/install/local_setup.sh
ros2 launch cloudwatch_robot [command]
```
There are two robot launch commands:
- rotate.launch.py - The robot starts rotating
- await_commands.launch.py - The robot is idle waiting movement commands, use this for teleop and navigation
Running Simulation Application
```
export TURTLEBOT3_MODEL=waffle_pi
source simulation_ws/install/local_setup.sh
ros2 launch cloudwatch_simulation [command]
```
There are three simulation launch commands for three different worlds:
- empty_world.launch.py - Empty world with some balls surrounding the turtlebot at (0,0)
- bookstore_turtlebot_navigation.launch.py - A retail space where the robot navigates to random goals

Monitoring with CloudWatch Logs

Robot logs from ROS2 nodes are streamed into CloudWatch Logs to Log Group robomaker_cloudwatch_monitoring_example. See cloudwatch_robot/config/cloudwatch_logs_config.yaml.

Monitoring with CloudWatch Metrics

Robot metrics from ROS2 nodes are reported into CloudWatch Metrics robomaker_cloudwatch_monitoring_example. Metric resolution is configured at 10 seconds. See cloudwatch_robot/config/cloudwatch_metrics_config.yaml.

Operational metrics include:

linear speed
angular speed
~~distance to nearest obstacle (closest lidar scan return)~~ Currently not working. See known issues below
distance to planned goal (bookstore only, requires its navigation system)

Health metrics include CPU and RAM usage.

Using this sample with RoboMaker

You first need to install colcon-ros-bundle. Python 3.5 or above is required.

pip3 install colcon-ros-bundle

After colcon-ros-bundle is installed you need to build your robot or simulation, then you can bundle with:

# Bundling Robot Application
cd robot_ws
source install/local_setup.sh
colcon bundle

# Bundling Simulation Application
cd simulation_ws
source install/local_setup.sh
colcon bundle

This produces the artifacts robot_ws/bundle/output.tar and simulation_ws/bundle/output.tar respectively.

You'll need to upload these to an s3 bucket, then you can use these files to create a robot application,
create a simulation application, and create a simulation job in RoboMaker.

Known Issues

There is currently an issue with the LaserScan messages emitted from the gazebo lidar plugin not being received by the monitor_obstacle_distance node. We're still investigating why this is occuring.

vanguard478/aws-robomaker-sample-application-cloudwatch