UoS-ros-setup 🤖

This repository supports both arm64 🍎 and x86_64 🪟 architectures.

Read the following information carefully before you proceed!

• If you have an Apple Silicon Mac, the image is based on arm64v8/ros:melodic-ros-base-bionic and contains the noVNC setup for GUI applications such as RViz and Gazebo.
• If you have a PC, the image is from the University of Surrey's container registry, so make sure you have GlobalProtect VPN installed and connected. See here for more information. A custom Dockerfile based on osrf/ros:melodic-desktop-full is a work in progress 🚧.
• Currently everything is running on integrated graphics. To enable GPU acceleration, you're on your own 🤷‍♂️.

Directory Layout

UoS-ros-setup
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── assets
│   ├── novnc_gui.png
│   ├── vscode.png
│   ├── x11_preferences.png
│   ├── xeyes.png
│   └── xquartz_login.png
├── catkin_ws
│   ├── Makefile
│   ├── build
│   ├── devel
│   ├── solutions
│   └── src
└── uos_vpn_setup.pdf

Dev Container Setup

For both setup, make sure you have Docker installed on your machine. For Mac, you can brew it.

brew install --cask docker

For Windows, use your choice of package manager.

choco install docker-desktop

Windows Setup 🪟

The Windows setup requires you to have WSL2 installed. Follow the instructions here to install WSL2. Fortunately, unlike the Apple Sillicon setup, WSLg takes care of the GUI applications so we don't have to install noVNC or vcXsrv.

1. Connect to vpn.surrey.ac.uk using GlobalProtect VPN. Run the following command to pull the image from the University of Surrey's container registry and tag it as uos-ros-setup:latest.

   docker pull container-registry.surrey.ac.uk/shared-containers/robotics-module-2:latest
   docker tag container-registry.surrey.ac.uk/shared-containers/robotics-module-2:latest uos-robotics:latest

2. To start the dev container, press Ctrl + Shift + P and select Dev Container: Reopen in Container.

3. Everything should just work. Try running RViz to test the GUI.

Apple Sillicon Setup 🍎

The Apple Sillicon setup uses Dockerfile.arm64 and will automatically build once you start the dev container.

1. Same as above. To start the dev container, press Cmd + Shift + P and select Dev Container: Reopen in Container.
2. Wait for the container to build. When it's finished you should see the message in your terminal:

   🚀 Container is ready! For 🍎 users, Connect to the UI by opening: http://localhost:6080/vnc.html in your browser
   

3. Click on the link in the terminal to open the noVNC session in your browser. The password for the noVNC session is password. Tada! You now have a ROS development environment setup.