ur5e_follow_uav.mp4
This Dockerfile provides a HTML5 VNC interface to access Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 with ROS 2 Humble, PX4 and Gazebo Harmonic. It includes additional tools such as Mozilla Firefox Navigator, Terminator and VSCodium for easy development. This project can be used as a template for different environment configurations through easy modifications. This work was greatly inspired by the work done by Tiryoh.
The implemented project consists of a UR5e robotic arm visually tracking a Holybro x500 drone equipped with an ArUco tag. Since there is no official support for robot control with ROS 2 Humble + Gazebo Harmonic, this project has additionally developed a custom ROS package to make them compatible (see src/gz_ros2_control). This project also provides a ROS 2 package with the description files of the UR5e arm equipped with the Robotiq-85 gripper and one Intel RealSense D435 camera attached to the arm through a custom-designed support assembly.
You can install Docker using the apt repository or install it from a package. Here, the apt repository installation method is indicated. In first place, you need to set up the Docker apt repository. The first step is to add the Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg
Next, add the repository to apt sources:
echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update
Afterwards, to install the Docker packages you need to run:
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin
You can run hello-world image to verify the installation:
sudo docker run hello-world
If you see Hello from Docker! message, it's a sign that you have succesfully installed and started Docker Engine. As you noticed, you have to run Docker with sudo and you will get permissions denied if you try to run docker run without it. If you don't want to use sudo create a Unix group called docker and add users to it:
sudo groupadd docker
sudo gpasswd -a $USER docker
newgrp docker
docker run hello-world
Docker Compose is a versatile tool that enables to define and handle multi-container applications in an easy way. This project uses Docker Compose commands for the building and running of the Docker image and container. To install it simply run:
sudo apt install docker-compose
After installing Docker, you need to clone this repository using:
cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/danisotelo/px4_ros2_humble.git
Now, go into the .env file and change the HOST_USER environment variable to your actual host user. Building the Docker image and running the container from the Dockerfile using Docker-Compose is really simple, you just need to run:
cd ~/px4_ros2_humble
docker-compose build
docker-compose up
It will take a while for the image to be built due to the large amount of files to be downloaded and installed (around 20 minutes). Once finished, you should see a message displaying a local host path. You can click on it or you can go to your navigator and type:
http://localhost:6080/
Click on Connect and now you have access to the container GUI through the HTML5 VNC interface.
Since the PX4-Autopilot is a heavy repository, it was decided not to include it directly inside the container but in a shared volume with the host. This way, it only has to be downloaded once and changes will be saved even after deleting the container. Run the following commands from a terminal inside the container to install it:
cd ~/shared_volume
git clone https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot.git --recursive
Next, enter the PX4-Autopilot directory, clean and build the source code:
cd PX4-Autopilot
make clean
make distclean
make submodulesclean
You can test if PX4 can run with the Gazebo Harmonic simulation with:
make px4_sitl gz_x500
The XRCE-DDS Agent is already built with the Docker image. In a new terminal, run the XRCE-DDS Agent. You should see them connect to each other.
MicroXRCEAgent udp4 -p 8888
For loading the PX4 files (airframes, models, and worlds) for the UR5e drone-tracking project, you need to additionally run a bash script, file_transfer that will be in charge of modifying the original PX4-Autopilot repository accordingly. If you want to use this simulation run in a container terminal:
cd ~/px4_files
bash file_transfer.sh
cd ~/shared_volume/PX4-Autopilot
make clean
make distclean
make submodulesclean
make px4_sitl gz_x500_tag
The ROS 2 workspace is named catkin_ws and belongs to the shared volume. This way, you should first manually move the folder src from the repository to the shared volume that was created after running the container, px4_ros2_humble_shared_volume/catkin_ws.
Then, you can access these files from the container, and changes will be saved even after deleting the container. The next step is to build the ROS 2 workspace and launch the simulation using the following commands from the catkin_ws folder:
cd ~/shared_volume/catkin_ws
colcon build --packages-select drone_following gz_ros2_control px4_msgs ur5e_gripper_description
ros2 launch drone_following simulation.launch.py
While working with the container if ever the user session is closed, the user and password are both ubuntu.
To stop the container from running simply open a new terminal in your host and run:
docker-compose down
In case you want to delete the images and volumes created by the container to rebuild it run:
docker-compose down --volumes
docker system prune -a --volumes
Feedback to improve the project is welcomed. Please report bugs and request features using the Issue Tracker.