ROS2 & PX4 VSCode Dev Environment

Welcome to our development environment template for ROS2, PX4, and Gazebo. This Docker-based setup enables seamless integration of ROS2, PX4, and Gazebo with VSCode, providing a robust environment for developing drone applications.

Citation

If you are using this template in your research, feel free to cite the following paper:

@INPROCEEDINGS{10556912,
  author={Rolland, Edouard G. A. and Grøntved, Kasper A. R. and Christensen, Anders Lyhne and Watson, Matthew and Richardson, Tom},
  booktitle={2024 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS)}, 
  title={Autonomous UAV Volcanic Plume Sampling Based on Machine Vision and Path Planning}, 
  year={2024},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={1064-1071},
  keywords={Training;Wildfires;Machine vision;Object detection;Manuals;Feature extraction;Visual servoing},
  doi={10.1109/ICUAS60882.2024.10556912}}

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Acknowledgment
• Features
• How to Use the Template
  • Prerequisites
  • Getting Started
• License

Acknowledgment

This template extends the vscode_ros2_workspace template by incorporating the PX4-Autopilot library as well as simulations in Gazebo. For more information about the original template, please visit the author's website.

Features

• ROS2 Integration
• PX4 Integration and Micro XRCE-DDS Agent & Client Setup
• Gazebo Simulation
• VSCode Workflow

How to Use the Template

Prerequisites

Before using this template, make sure you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• Docker
• VSCode
• VSCode Remote Containers Plugin

Getting Started

Step 1: Get the Template

Step 2: Create Your Own Project Repository

Step 3: Clone the Project to Your Computer

Step 4: Open the Folder in VSCode

To interact with the container, you need to install the Docker extension in VSCode. Follow the steps below:

Step 5: Build the Container

You can build the container for the first time by following the steps presented in the following picture.

Please note that if you're on Windows, ensure that Docker Engine is running in the background. The initial build may take some time.

Test your container

To test your contrainer and also the Gazebo installation you can run the following commands in the terminal.

cd
cd PX4-Autopilot/
make px4_sitl gz_x500

This set of commands should open a Gazebo Tab display a drone as presented in the following figure. If the command is not displaying a tab, you should refer to the FAQ section of this readme to set up a X server.

FAQ

WSL2

The gui doesn't show up

This is likely because the DISPLAY environment variable is not getting set properly.

1. Find out what your DISPLAY variable should be

   In your WSL2 Ubuntu instance

   echo $DISPLAY
   

2. Copy that value into the .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file

   	"containerEnv": {
           "DISPLAY": ":0",
      }

I want to use vGPU

If you want to access the vGPU through WSL2, you'll need to add additional components to the .devcontainer/devcontainer.json file in accordance to these directions

	"runArgs": [
		"--network=host",
		"--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE",
		"--security-opt=seccomp:unconfined",
		"--security-opt=apparmor:unconfined",
		"--volume=/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix",
		"--volume=/mnt/wslg:/mnt/wslg",
		"--volume=/usr/lib/wsl:/usr/lib/wsl",
		"--device=/dev/dxg",
      		"--gpus=all"
	],
	"containerEnv": {
		"DISPLAY": "${localEnv:DISPLAY}", // Needed for GUI try ":0" for windows
		"WAYLAND_DISPLAY": "${localEnv:WAYLAND_DISPLAY}",
		"XDG_RUNTIME_DIR": "${localEnv:XDG_RUNTIME_DIR}",
		"PULSE_SERVER": "${localEnv:PULSE_SERVER}",
		"LD_LIBRARY_PATH": "/usr/lib/wsl/lib",
		"LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE": "1" // Needed for software rendering of opengl
	},

Repos are not showing up in VS Code source control

This is likely because vscode doesn't necessarily know about other repositories unless you've added them directly.

File->Add Folder To Workspace

Or you've added them as a git submodule.

To add all of the repos in your *.repos file, run the script

python3 .devcontainer/repos_to_submodules.py

or run the task titled add submodules from .repos

Docker Desktop

If you have installed docker combined with Docker Desktop (This is, to my knowledge, only for unix based systems), you might encounter errors when binding the container. The error might look like this:

docker: Error response from daemon: invalid mount config for type 
"bind": bind source path does not exist: /tmp/.X11-unix

Fix this by adding the directories in the error message to your shared files in your docker desktop settings under Resources -> File sharing -> Virtual file shares.