ros2_tracing analysis example

ros2_tracing system analysis example. Demonstrates how the ROS 2 instrumentation (in rclcpp/rcl/rmw) and ROS 2 tracing tools (Trace launch action) provided by ros2_tracing can be leveraged.

It uses:

• the reference system proposed by the ROS 2 Real-Time Working Group as an example application
• tracetools_analysis in a simple Python script to create simple plots of the execution data
• Eclipse Trace Compass to correlate ROS 2 execution information with Linux kernel execution information

This is part of the ros2_tracing paper. If you use or refer to ros2_tracing or this repository, please cite:

• C. Bédard, I. Lütkebohle, and M. Dagenais, "ros2_tracing: Multipurpose Low-Overhead Framework for Real-Time Tracing of ROS 2," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 6511–6518, 2022.

BibTeX:

@article{bedard2022ros2tracing,
  title={ros2\_tracing: Multipurpose Low-Overhead Framework for Real-Time Tracing of ROS 2},
  author={B{\'e}dard, Christophe and L{\"u}tkebohle, Ingo and Dagenais, Michel},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  year={2022},
  volume={7},
  number={3},
  pages={6511--6518},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2022.3174346}
}

Timing analysis

1. Set up system to build ROS 2 and enable tracing
   • https://docs.ros.org/en/rolling/Installation/Ubuntu-Development-Setup.html
   • https://gitlab.com/ros-tracing/ros2_tracing
     • Both LTTng userspace and LTTng kernel tracers are required
2. Set up code workspaces and build

   ./setup_workspace.sh

   • this creates the workspace and builds it in release mode
3. Run example system using launch file

   source analysis_ws/install/setup.bash
   ros2 launch system.launch.py

   • the launch file (system.launch.py) sets up tracing using the Trace launch action and executes the example application
   • trace data will be written to system-YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS/
4. Process data and plot results using Python script

   python3 analyze.py system-YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS

   • plots will be created and saved under the trace directory
     • these plots show various kinds of timing information for the /BehaviorPlanner node's input topics, output topics, and periodic callback
   • the Python script will also output information to help locate the /BehaviorPlanner node timer callback instance with the longest interval in the trace data (see Combined analysis with Linux kernel data):
     • the callback ID (e.g., 0x013579acdf)
     • the callback instance index ([0,N-1])

Combined analysis with Linux kernel data

1. Download and open Trace Compass
2. Import userspace and kernel traces from the system-YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS/ directory
   1. Under File, click on Import...
   2. Select the root directory of the trace (system-YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS/)
   3. Then make sure the trace directory is selected in the filesystem tree view
   4. Click on Finish
3. Create experiment (i.e., an aggregation of multiple traces)
   1. In the tree view on the left, under Traces, select both traces
   2. Then right click, and, under Open As Experiment..., select Generic Experiment
4. Open Control Flow view
   1. This shows the state of threads over time (running, waiting, etc.) using colours and shows the scheduling switches between threads using arrows
5. In the events tables, find the event corresponding to the timer callback instance of interest using the information in the output of the analysis script
   1. Search in the events table for Event Type equal to ros2:callback_start with Contents containing callback=0x013579acdf
   2. Find the right callback instance using the given index by counting the events (starting from an index of 0)
6. Click Show View Filters button
   1. Unselect all threads, select the main ROS 2 threads from the application (or at least the thread that generated the timer callback events of interest; see the TID associated with the events)