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Additional settings for developers#

Console settings for ROS 2#

Colorizing logger output#

By default, ROS 2 logger doesn't colorize the output. To colorize it, write the following in your .bashrc:

export RCUTILS_COLORIZED_OUTPUT=1

Customizing the format of logger output#

By default, ROS 2 logger doesn't output detailed information such as file name, function name, or line number. To customize it, write the following in your .bashrc:

export RCUTILS_CONSOLE_OUTPUT_FORMAT="[{severity} {time}] [{name}]: {message} ({function_name}() at {file_name}:{line_number})"

For more options, see here.

Network settings for ROS 2#

ROS 2 employs DDS, and the configuration of ROS 2 and DDS is described separately. For ROS 2 networking concepts, refer to the official documentation.

ROS 2 network setting#

ROS 2 multicasts data on the local network by default. Therefore, when you develop in an office, the data flows over the local network of your office. It may cause collisions of packets or increases in network traffic.

To avoid these, there are two options.

  • Localhost-only communication
  • Same domain only communication on the local network

Unless you plan to use multiple host computers on the local network, localhost-only communication is recommended. For details, refer to the sections below.

Enabling localhost-only communication#

Write the following in your .bashrc: For more information, see the ROS 2 documentation.

export ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY=1

If you export ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY=1, MULTICAST must be enabled at the loopback address. To verify that MULTICAST is enabled, use the following command.

$ ip link show lo
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

If the word MULTICAST is not printed, use the following command to enable it.

sudo ip link set lo multicast on

Same domain only communication on the local network#

ROS 2 uses ROS_DOMAIN_ID to create groups and communicate between machines in the groups. Since all ROS 2 nodes use domain ID 0 by default, it may cause unintended interference.

To avoid it, set a different domain ID for each group in your .bashrc:

# Replace X with the Domain ID you want to use
# Domain ID should be a number in range [0, 101] (inclusive)
export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=X

Also confirm that ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY is 0 by using the following command.

echo $ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY # If the output is 1, localhost has priority.

For more information, see the ROS 2 Documentation.

DDS settings#

Autoware uses DDS for inter-node communication. ROS 2 documentation recommends users to tune DDS to utilize its capability. Especially, receive buffer size is the critical parameter for Autoware. If the parameter is not large enough, Autoware will failed in receiving large data like point cloud or image.

Tuning DDS#

Unless customized, CycloneDDS is adopted by default. For example, to execute Autoware with CycloneDDS, prepare a config file. A sample config file is given below. Save it as cyclonedds_config.xml.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CycloneDDS xmlns="https://cdds.io/config" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="https://cdds.io/config https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-cyclonedds/cyclonedds/master/etc/cyclonedds.xsd">
<Domain Id="any">
        <General>
            <Interfaces>
                <NetworkInterface autodetermine="true" priority="default" multicast="default" />
            </Interfaces>
            <AllowMulticast>default</AllowMulticast>
            <MaxMessageSize>65500B</MaxMessageSize>
        </General>
        <Internal>
            <SocketReceiveBufferSize min="10MB"/>
            <Watermarks>
                <WhcHigh>500kB</WhcHigh>
            </Watermarks>
        </Internal>
    </Domain>
</CycloneDDS>

This configuration is mostly taken from Eclipse Cyclone DDS:Run-time configuration documentation. You can see why each value is set as such under the documentation link.

Set the config file path and enlarge the Linux kernel maximum buffer size before launching Autoware.

export CYCLONEDDS_URI=file:///absolute/path/to/cyclonedds_config.xml
sudo sysctl -w net.core.rmem_max=2147483647

For more information, Refer to ROS 2 documentation. Reading user guide for chosen DDS is helpful for more understanding.

Tuning DDS for multiple host computers (for advanced users)#

When Autoware runs on multiple host computers, IP Fragmentation should be taken into account. As ROS 2 documentation recommends, parameters for IP Fragmentation should be set as shown in the following example.

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ipfrag_time=3
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ipfrag_high_thresh=134217728     # (128 MB)