Meta ROS

These instructions are for building ROS 2 Humble and ROS 1 Noetic using OpenEmbedded release series Dunfell (Yocto 3.1) or Kirkstone (Yocto 4.0) on IoT Yocto. An overview of OpenEmbedded/Yocto can be found in the Yocto Project Overview and Concepts Manual. Additional information on meta-ros can be found in Superflore OE Recipe Generation Scheme.

Important

Users can only choose RO2 or ROS1 to install, we do not support both versions existing in the system at the same time

Add meta-ros to rity-demo-image

In conf/local.conf , change MACHINE to your desired platform and comment out multilib-relevant configuration:

# change MACHINE to your desired platform, default is i300a-pumpkin
MACHINE ??= "genio-700-evk"

# Define multilib target
#require conf/multilib.conf
#MULTILIBS = "multilib:lib32"
#DEFAULTTUNE:virtclass-multilib-lib32 = "armv7athf-neon"

# Video Encode on i300a is only supported in the 32-bits binaries
#IMAGE_INSTALL:remove:i300a = "mtk-vpud"
#IMAGE_INSTALL:append:i300a = "lib32-mtk-vpud"

Build ROS on Kirkstone

Please run following command to download the meta-ros layer:

git clone https://github.com/ros/meta-ros.git -b kirkstone $PROJ_ROOT/src/meta-ros

If not already kirkstone Modify the compatible series in configuration file to kirkstone

vim src/meta-ros/meta-ros-common/conf/ros-distro/ros-distro.conf

# change ROS_OE_RELEASE_SERIES to kirkstone, default is honister
ROS_OE_RELEASE_SERIES = "kirkstone"

Add ROS2 layer

Add meta-ros layers to conf/bblayers.conf

<absolute_path_to_rity-kirkstone>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros2 \
<absolute_path_to_rity-kirkstone>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-common \
<absolute_path_to_rity-kirkstone>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros2-humble \

Add this to the bottom of conf/local.conf

ROS_DISTRO = "humble"
EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES ?= "ros-implicit-workspace"
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " ros-core "

# Add subsequent desired ROS2 packages as below:
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " demo-nodes-cpp "

Note

Currently we only support ROS2 on Kirkstone.

Important

You might get build failed log for libcamera similar to the following content

ERROR: Multiple versions of libcamera are due to be built
($PROJ_DIR/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros2-humble/generated-recipes/libcamera/libcamera_0.1.0-1.bb
$PROJ_DIR/src/poky/../meta-openembedded/meta-multimedia/recipes-multimedia/libcamera/libcamera.bb). Only one version of a given PN should be built in any given build.
You likely need to set PREFERRED_VERSION_libcamera to select the correct version or don't depend on multiple versions.

We are getting this error because both the recipes, libcamera from OpenEmbedded as well as the one provided by ROS2 share the same name and version. The best way forward for now is to change the name of this ROS2 recipe from libcamera to ros-libcamera. The below steps work:

i. Navigate to your project directory
    # cd $PROJ_DIR/src/meta-ros/meta-ros2-humble/generated-recipes

ii. Rename libcamera directory to ros-libcamera, also the recipe
    # mv libcamera ros-libcamera
    # cd ros-libcamera
    # mv libcamera_0.1.0-1.bb ros-libcamera.bb

iii. Edit the recipe (`ros-libcamera.bb`) and rename ROS_CN and ROS_BPN from libcamera to ros-libcamera:
    # ROS_CN = "ros-libcamera"
    # ROS_BPN = "ros-libcamera"

iv. Navigate to $PROJ_DIR/src/meta-ros/meta-ros2-humble/recipes-bbappends/
    # mv libcamera ros-libcamera
    # cd ros-libcamera
    # mv libcamera_0.1.0-1.bbappend ros-libcamera.bbappend

v. ROS2 package camera-ros (generated-recipes/camera-ros/camera-ros*.bb) depends on ros2 package
libcamera. Rename ``libcamera`` to ``ros-libcamera``.

If you want to add libcamera ROS2 package to the image, simply add IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " ros-libcamera " in conf/local.conf.

Build image. Please refer to Build Image section for details.

Build ROS on Dunfell

Please run following command to download the meta-ros layer:

git clone https://github.com/ros/meta-ros.git -b dunfell $PROJ_ROOT/src/meta-ros

Add ROS2 layer

Add meta-ros layers to conf/bblayers.conf

<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros2 \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-common \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros2-galactic \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-backports-gatesgarth \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-backports-hardknott \

Add this to the bottom of conf/local.conf

ROS_DISTRO = "galactic"
EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES ?= "ros-implicit-workspace"
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " ros-core "

# Add subsequent desired ROS2 packages as below:
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " demo-nodes-cpp "

Build image. Please refer to Build Image section for details.

Add ROS1 layer

Add meta-ros layers to conf/bblayers.conf

<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros1 \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-common \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros1-noetic \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-backports-gatesgarth \
<absolute_path_to_rity-dunfell>/src/poky/../meta-ros/meta-ros-backports-hardknott \

Add this to the bottom of conf/local.conf

ROS_DISTRO = "noetic"
EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES ?= "ros-implicit-workspace"
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " ros-core "

Comment out the blacklisted roslisp and genlisp to avoid the building rejection

vim src/meta-ros/meta-ros1-noetic/conf/ros-distro/include/noetic/ros-distro-recipe-blacklist.inc

# Comment out the following lines
#PNBLACKLIST[roslisp] ?= "${@bb.utils.contains('ROS_WORLD_SKIP_GROUPS', 'lisp', 'depends on sbcl for which there is no OE recipe', '', d)}"
#PNBLACKLIST[genlisp] ?= "${@bb.utils.contains('ROS_WORLD_SKIP_GROUPS', 'lisp', 'depends on sbcl for which there is no OE recipe', '', d)}"

Build image. Please refer to Build Image section for details.

Build Image

Please refer to Build from Source Code to build the demo images of each board.

Note

Various WARNING-s will be issued by Bitbake when building these images. They can be ignored. After a successful build of an image, it can be found under TMPDIR/deploy/images/MACHINE.

Image Sanity Testing

ROS 2 Sanity Test

Note

Without a network connection, there’s no output from ROS2 topic echo /chatter.

$ source /etc/profile.d/ros/setup.sh

$ ros2 topic list
/parameter_events
/rosout

$ (sleep 5; ros2 topic pub /chatter std_msgs/String "data: Hello world") &

$ ros2 topic echo /chatter
publisher: beginning loop
publishing #1: std_msgs.msg.String(data='Hello world')

data: Hello world

publishing #2: std_msgs.msg.String(data='Hello world')

data: Hello world

ROS 1 Sanity Test

For now, only the barest minimum sanity testing is done on the images.

$ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.sh

$ roscore &
...
started core service [/rosout]

$ rosnode list
/rosout

$ rosnode info /rosout
Node [/rosout]
Publications:
 * /rosout_agg [rosgraph_msgs/Log]

Subscriptions:
 * /rosout [unknown type]

Services:
 * /rosout/get_loggers
 * /rosout/set_logger_level


contacting node http://genio-700-evk:40943/ ...
Pid: 967