Nividia Isaac <-> ROS2 Bridge

Question

Hey guys,

I've been working on building a bridge between these two eco systems [ISAAC <-> ROS2] .

My current approach involves building ROS2 and all its packages the usual way colcon build --symlink-install and then try to link the built libraries in Nvidia Isaac's bazel WORKSPACE / BUILD files and simply use the compiled rclcpp library inside the bazel workspace.

In theory I should be able to then compile the Isaac package with dynamic links to the ROS2 libraries with bazel and have now created a nvidia isaac package that is capable of sending/receiving ROS2 msgs, right?

I would like to know if this is a valid approach and if this has been solved already and i'm just reinventing the wheel here?

I did come accross this github project: https://github.com/colcon/colcon-ros-bazel , but there I didn't manage to find documentation therefore I dont know how to use it and if it's fit for purpose. Nor does it directly imply ISAAC <-> ROS2 compatibility

Thank you for your time!

Deniz

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Originally posted by Deniz on ROS Answers with karma: 36 on 2020-07-31

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by Dirk Thomas on 2020-07-31:
@Theosakamg FYI

Answer 1

I found a "reasonable" way of doing this. This method assumes that you built ros2 using colcon build --merge-install but you can extrapolate this logic in case you used colcon build --symlink-install, you only need to modify the BUILD file for this.

1) Register the ROS2 install folder as a new_local_repository in the bazel WORKSPACE file by adding the following lines (located in the main nvidia isaac folder):

new_local_repository(
name = "ros2",
path = "(full path to the build folder) /ros2_foxy/install",
build_file = "(full path to the build folder) /ros2_foxy/install/BUILD",

)

2) Add a BUILD file inside the ros2/install folder with the following content: https://gist.github.com/dHofmeister/698c787cab9622c89b1a97ea878afac9

3) Add the depency of your isaac module to ros2:

isaac_cc_module( ... deps = ["@ros2//:ros2"],)

4) include the rclcpp library header in your isaac_cc_module:

#include "rclcpp/rclcpp.hpp"
#include "geometry_msgs/msg/pose_stamped.hpp"

4) Make sure you disable rclcpp's bind on the system SIGINT signal as it conflicts with isaac's sigint handler:

int argc = 1;
char const *const argv[] ={ "Bridge" };
rclcpp::InitOptions options{};
options.shutdown_on_sigint = false;
rclcpp::init(argc, argv, options);
ros_node = std::make_shared<MinimalPublisher>();

This code is implemented in the ::start() function of your isaac_cc_module. make sure you initialise the ros_node variable in the node header std::shared_ptr<MinimalPublisher> ros_node;.

You now have the ros_node class nested in the isaac_node class and can use them.

void Bridge::tick() {
    geometry_msgs::msg::PoseStamped msg{};
    ros_node->callback();
    LOG_INFO("ping");
}

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Originally posted by Deniz with karma: 36 on 2020-08-05

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1