Sample ROS Publisher

Contains two sample publishers to check/verify connection between separate ros terminals.

• scripts/pub_text.py : Publish a std_msgs::String
• scripts/pub_marker.py : Publish a visualization_msgs::Marker

Basic Run nodes

rosrun docker_ros_test pub_text.py

and

rosrun docker_ros_test pub_marker.py

How to use ROS with docker

If you are a computer vision/robotics researcher or an engineerer checkout my blog post on what docker can do for you. HERE. Following is a checklist to get this sample nodes running on ros on docker.

• Run the container image. You may use my images which has ros. hub.docker/mpkuse.

$(host) docker run -ti mpkuse/kusevisionkit:ros-kinetic-vins

• Setup a catkin_ws. See ros-tutorials on how to setup a catkin_ws.

$(container) mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws/
$(container) catkin_make
$(container) source devel/setup.bash

• Using docker inspect <container name> ​get the IP address of the container. Assuming the ip address of container is 172.17.0.2 and the hosts's ip-address is 172.17.0.1. 
• Edit the /etc/hosts file on the host and also on docker so that both docker-container and hosts knows each other. This is needed for roscore to work correctly. It looks something like below. Assuming deephorse is hostname of the host PC and ​ 0ef6065d7b27 is the container id. 

172.17.0.2 0ef6065d7b27
172.17.0.1 deephorse

• Make sure container can ping to host with hostname and host can pind container with container id. 

$(host) ping 0ef6065d7b27
$(container) ping deephorse. 

• Run roscore.

$(container) roscore
$(host) export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://0ef6065d7b27:11311/

• Run a dummy node and see if you can receive messages on the host PC. You may like to use my dummy node.

$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$(container) git clone https://github.com/mpkuse/docker_ros_test
$(container) cd ~/catkin_ws
$(container) catkin_make
$(container) rosrun docker_ros_test pub_text.py

• Verify the host can receive the messages.

$(host) rostopic list
/chatter
/rosout
/rosout_agg
$(host) rostopic echo /chatter
$(host) rostopic echo /chatter
data: hello world 1542596296.97
---
data: hello world 1542596297.07
---
.
.

Congratulations..!!! You have successfully setup ros on docker.