auroai/apollo_ros_bridge repository overview

⁠Apollo ROS Bridge

⁠Overview

This is a C++ library which is used to interface messages between ROS⁠ and Apollo⁠ ecosystem. It is designed to help developers use ROS libraries to communicate with Apollo and hence make development easier.

Affiliation: Ridecell⁠
Maintainer: Abhilash Balachandran [email protected]⁠

Lidar Pointcloud received from Apollo , converted and published as a ROS message. {Left} Cyber_visualizer tool showing cyber pointcloud message. {Right} Rviz showing ros pointcloud message

⁠Dependencies

• Apollo 3.5 ⁠
• nvidia docker ⁠

⁠Installation

⁠Using Prebuilt docker image

There is a prebuild docker image which can be directly used. To use the prebuilt docker image:

cd docker_tools
./run.sh

⁠Building docker image

To build the docker image on your machine,

cd docker_tools
./build.sh $image_name

If no image name is provided, it defaults to auroai/apollo_ros_bridge:latest

⁠Building bridge code

In order to build the bridge, first build the appropriate ros messages used in the bridge source code:

cd /home/apollo_ros_bridge/ros_pkgs
catkin build
source devel/setup.bash

Now, build the bridge source code using bazel. From the root workspace of the package,

cd /home/apollo_ros_bridge
bazel build cyber_ros_bridge:all

To run the example node, run

roscore && ./bazel-bin/cyber_ros_bridge/cyber_ros_bridge

for extra logging,

GLOG_v=4 GLOG_logtostderr=1  ./bazel-bin/cyber_ros_bridge/cyber_ros_bridge

This launches the bridge with default params (defined in the common folder).

Alternatively, to launch the bridge with custom parameters,

cyber_launch start cyber_ros_bridge/launch/bridge_example.launch

Run Apollo ⁠

Topics can be visualized with rostopic list and echo

Alternatively, publish relevant topics from ROS and view topics using cyber_monitor⁠ on Apollo's side

A sample script to run a ROS Container has been provided to help developers. This can be launched using:

cd /home/apollo_ros_bridge/docker_tools
./example_ros_run.sh

⁠Adding Custom Bridging

For detailed information on how to add own bridging of topics, refer to adding custom bridging⁠

⁠Copyright and License

The apollo ros bridge source code is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0⁠

⁠Future Updates

• Support for apollo 5.0
• Timer method for bridging
• easier docker setup