mastrogeppetto/rosdesktop repository overview

⁠ROSDesktop - A native ROS experience on Windows

The image provides a lightweight Ubuntu/XFCE interface with installed the Jazzy LTS release of the Robot Operating System. Tested on Windows and Linux systems its operation on MacOS is untested.

The operational environment features all commands and graphic tools needed to run the official ROS tutorials, including turtlesim, rviz2 and others. Gazebo is not available in the image but can be installed following the instructions provided (tested).

The image includes the gedit editor and netsurfer, a lightweight browser useful to visualize tutorials and copy/paste commands. The user can install further apt packages, as in an ordinary Ubuntu Desktop.

To build and run the container for the first time use:

docker run -p 36901:6901 --name ros-docker --hostname rosdesktop --env VNC_RESOLUTION=1920x1080 mastrogeppetto/rosdesktop

Notice the value of the --name option, which is the container name used in further commands.

The desktop interface is available on the browser at URL http://localhost:36901/vnc.html⁠. Log in with the headless password.

⁠Examples: publish/subscribe, turtlesim and the dummy robot

There is no need to source the ROS environment in terminals.

To run the pub/sub tutorial open two terminals. In one type

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

and in the other

ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

The nodes start exchanging "Hallo world" messages.

To visualize the network graph use the rqt_graph command.

To display the turtle and control it:

ros2 run turtlesim turtlesim_node &
ros2 run turtlesim turtle_teleop_key  

To visualize the operation of the dummy-robot run:

ros2 launch dummy_robot_bringup dummy_robot_bringup_launch.py &
rviz2 -f world

In the rviz2 window, click the Add button (bottom-left of the rviz2 window) and select the TF plugin.

⁠Container lifecycle and troubleshooting

To stop the container click the Default button on the top right of the screen and Log out....

To rerun the same container you may have possibly updated run:

docker start ros-docker

If the container gets messed up it can be rebuilt with the command above, after removing it with docker rm ros-docker.

⁠Credits

This image is built upon the https://hub.docker.com/r/accetto/ubuntu-vnc-xfce-g3⁠. See the related documentation for instructions and further environment variables setup.