Isaac ROS Common

Overview

The Isaac ROS Common repository contains a number of scripts and Dockerfiles to help streamline development and testing with the Isaac ROS suite.

The Docker images included in this package provide pre-compiled binaries for ROS 2 Humble on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal.

Additionally, on x86_64 platforms, Docker containers allow you to quickly set up a sensitive set of frameworks and dependencies to ensure a smooth experience with Isaac ROS packages. The Dockerfiles for this platform are based on the version 22.03 image from Deep Learning Frameworks Containers. On Jetson platforms, JetPack manages all of these dependencies for you.

Use of Docker images enables CI|CD systems to scale with DevOps work and run automated testing in cloud native platforms on Kubernetes.

For solutions to known issues, see the Troubleshooting section.

Isaac ROS Docker Development Environment

run_dev.sh sets up a development environment containing ROS 2 and key versions of NVIDIA frameworks prepared for both x86_64 and Jetson. This script prepares a Docker image with a supported configuration for the host machine and delivers you into a bash prompt running inside the container. From here, you are ready to execute ROS 2 build/run commands with your host workspace files, which are mounted into the container and available to edit both on the host and in the container. If you run this script again while it is running, it will attach a new shell to the same container.

By default, the /workspaces/isaac_ros-dev directory in the container is mapped from ~/workspaces/isaac_ros-dev on the host machine if it exists; otherwise, it is mapped using the current working directory where the script was invoked. You can set the host directory that the container maps to explicitly by running the script with the desired path as the first argument:

scripts/run_dev.sh <path to workspace>

Configuring `run_dev.sh`

run_dev.sh prepares a base Docker image and mounts your target workspace into the running container. The Docker image is assembled by parsing a period-delimited image key into matching Dockerfiles and building each one in sequence. For example, an image key of first.second.third could match {Dockerfile.first, Dockerfile.second, Dockerfile.third}, where run_dev.sh will build the image for Dockerfile.first, then use that image as the base image while building Dockerfile.second, and so on. The file matching looks for the largest subsequence, so first.second.third could also match {Dockerfile.first.second, Dockerfile.third} depending on which files exist in the search paths. Using this pattern, you can add your own layers on top of the base images provided in Isaac ROS to set up your environment your way, such as installing additional packages to use.

If you write a file with the name .isaac_ros_common-config in the same directory as the run_dev.sh, you can configure the development environment. The following keys can be configured in .isaac_ros_common-config:

Key	Type	Description	Examples
`CONFIG_IMAGE_KEY`	String	Image key with period-delimited components	`ros2_humble.realsense`, `humble`
`CONFIG_DOCKER_SEARCH_DIRS`	Base array of strings	List of directories to search for Dockerfiles when matching	(`$HOME/ros_ws/docker $HOME/docker`)

For example, if you had the following directory structure:

workspaces/isaac_ros-dev
    workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/src
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/src/isaac_ros_common
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/src/isaac_ros_common/scripts
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/src/isaac_ros_common/scripts/.isaac_ros_common-config

        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/docker
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/docker/Dockerfile.mine
        workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/docker/myfile.txt

where Dockerfile.mine can be your own custom image layers of the form using its host directory for the Docker build context:

ARG BASE_IMAGE
FROM ${BASE_IMAGE}

... steps ...

COPY myfile.txt /myfile.txt

... more steps ...

You could extend the base image launched as a container by run_dev.sh as follows.

workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/src/isaac_ros_common/scripts/.isaac_ros_common-config

CONFIG_IMAGE_KEY="ros2_humble.mine"
CONFIG_DOCKER_SEARCH_DIRS=(workspaces/isaac_ros-dev/ros_ws/docker)

This configures the image key to match with mine included and specifies where to look first for the Dockerfiles before the default.

Supported Platforms

This package is designed and tested to be compatible with ROS 2 Humble running on Jetson or an x86_64 system with an NVIDIA GPU.

Note

Versions of ROS 2 earlier than Humble are not supported. This package depends on specific ROS 2 implementation features that were only introduced beginning with the Humble release.

Platform	Hardware	Software	Notes
Jetson	Jetson Orin Jetson Xavier	JetPack 5.1.2	For best performance, ensure that power settings are configured appropriately.
x86_64	NVIDIA GPU	Ubuntu 20.04+ CUDA 11.8+

Docker

To simplify development, we strongly recommend leveraging the Isaac ROS Dev Docker images by following these steps. This will streamline your development environment setup with the correct versions of dependencies on both Jetson and x86_64 platforms.

Note

All Isaac ROS Quickstarts, tutorials, and examples have been designed with the Isaac ROS Docker images as a prerequisite.

Customize your Dev Environment

To customize your development environment, reference this guide.

Updates

Date	Changes
2023-10-18	Updated for Isaac ROS 2.0.0
2023-05-25	Refreshed ROS 2 Humble
2023-04-05	Experimental support for WSL2, merged image keys `humble` and `nav2` into `ros2_humble`
2022-10-19	Minor updates and bugfixes
2022-08-31	Update to be compatible with JetPack 5.0.2
2022-06-30	Support ROS 2 Humble and miscellaneous bug fixes.
2022-06-16	Update `run_dev.sh` and removed `isaac_ros_nvengine`
2021-10-20	Migrated to NVIDIA-ISAAC-ROS, added `isaac_ros_nvengine` and `isaac_ros_nvengine_interfaces` packages
2021-08-11	Initial release to NVIDIA-AI-IOT