ROS2 transition - MRS UAV System diagram

MRS UAV Core

New features - not in ROS1 MRS yet

MRS UAV Modules

Robofly

Sensor drivers

Gazebo + PX4 SITL

MRS Course tasks

Octomap mapping & planning

UVDAR

Documentation

Buildfarm

Core example packages

PX4 + Mavros

Precise Landing

Computer vision examples

Summer School task (for 2026)

MRS Apptainer

MRS Docker

Portainer system

Flight Forge

Task 01 controller

Task 02 formation

Task 03 swarm

Months-worth of work (1 Tomas)

Weeks-woth of work (1 Tomas)

Days-worth of work (1 Tomas)

Third-party package refactoring decision making tree

Well then?

Let's adopt the ROS2 version and update it with our changes

Let's refactor the ROS1 version into ROS2 ourselves

Let's adopt the ROS2 branch and fix it's problems

Is there a ROS2 branch?

Do we have our own changes to the ROS1 branch

Check if the ROS2 branch needs the changes as well

Do we need the changes?

Does it perform well?

Decide if we should fix the ROS2 branch or to port the ROS1 (that worked) to ROS2

Let's adopt the ROS2 branch

Is it better to merge them into the ROS2 version?

Refactor to ROS2 ourselves

Test the ROS2 branch as it is

Replace it with something better

START

Do we want to keep the software?

MRS DJI Tello API

refactor

MRS UAV Status

Acquisition node
Presentation node

MRS UAV Autostart

Refactor
Tests

MRS UAV Deployment

refactor config files
example tmux sessions

MRS Coppelia simulation

I would keep it as an example
refactor

Colcon workspace

how does the mixin feature work

Minor points:

proper handling of UTM zones

Safety area manager

refactor
incorporate

Diagnostics manager?

talk to Vojta and get an idea how it works
Maybe Matous should do it?

Trajectory generation

Refactor
Tests

MRS UAV Shell Additions

will the waitFor macros gonna be needed in ROS2?
- Looks like no!
refactor

Python

sweeping generator

NLOPT solver ROS wrapper

refactor

F4F

PX4 Hw API

Refactor
Test with a real drone first (if the comunications work as expected)

Mavros

Mavros works

MRS Rviz plugins

not essential, should be simple
refactor

Is FastRTSP good enough for images and pointclouds? (deleg. Tsoy Artyom)

not as bad as initially thought
try the Zenoh RMW, which should work like the ROS1 with roscore
FastRTSP is unusable for real-time performance reasons

Timeouting

controller timeouting
tracking timeouting

Rosbag Record (deleg. Tsoy Artyom)

how do our customisations from ROS1 apply?
- rosbag record is killed when it cannot write to the disk anymore
- it publishes and prints the datarate
investigate

MRS UAV Development

colon alias for ease of use
custom roscd alias
pre-sourcing of a selected workspace for speedup of the process

mrs_msgs

refactor
building of doxygen docs

ROS2 inter-robot communication

How to correctly configure remote access to remote ROS2 machine?
How to replace the old Nimbro setup with native ROS2 features

External dependencies

ROS
Eigen
PCL (neccessary?)
OpenCV (neccessary?)

START

refactor ROS bindings and integration
udpate examples

Unreal sim package

Simulator node
HW APi

Octomap server

refactor
merge changes from SPRIND

F4F

CI Scripts

set of common scripts used by the buildfarm and by separate repositories' actions
update and refactor

RMW Zenoh

will it be better than FastDDS?
can it replace nimbro?
- can it be configured per-topic?
does it perform with fast and large msgs?

refactor ROS bindings and integration
udpate examples

F4F

ROS2 bridge (Hugues)

Is it alive? Can it be used by people who want to run their ROS1 node agains the ROS2 system?
investigate

MRS Octomap Tools

refactor
is it used?

MRS Docs

updating prerequisities about ROS
refactoring all example pages
refactoring pieces of ROS1-related code snippets

Cheatsheet

Update ROS-related stuff

Main github page

update when ready

MRS Internal wiki

update

F4F

TODO

Although the estimation manager checks for data on the "control input" topic, the particular estimator might be subscribing a wrong topic, therefore, you might miss the error of bad remapping
Mavros config needs different configs for Garmin with old (id 33) and new fw (id 0, pitch_270)
Batch visualizered topic are not shown in rviz

Python

blob detector

CPP

edge detector

F4F

SubT Planning lib

refactor
might not contain ROS

Octomap planner

refactor
merge changes from SPRIND

Libcamera ROS driver

there should be official ROS2 branch
rafactor

Libcamera driver library

refactor (probably stays the same)

ICM IMU driver

refactor

ROS Kalibr docker

does Kalibr have a ROS2 version (it needs rosbag as an input)
refactor

F4F

Stacks

refactor/create example stacks

Object tracking example

refactor

Hailo AI adapter

refactor
update base image builder

F4F documentation

update

MRS UAV Gazebo testing

refactor

Basic robofly example

basic example

Portainer stacks

refactor

F4F software installation guide

update

MRS Bumper

refactor

Gazebo common & extra resources

custom plugins
custom worlds

PX4 SITL

updgrade to the newest reasonable PX4 version

Who is going to do it?
Are there any dependencies to real sensor drivers?

UVDAR Gazebo plugin

Refactor

UVDAR Core

Refactor

F4F

Livox360 driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
refactor

Basler driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
beware the multithreading problem
refactor

Bluefox driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
refactor

Landing controller

refactor

UVDAR calibration routine

Refactor

Robofly's UVDAR

rafactor

F4F

Realsense driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
refactor

Ouster driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
refactor

Luxonis driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
refactor

Landing estimator

refactor

Gazebo simulation package

refactor

April tag

find and adapt ROS2 version

Summer school simulation and wrappers

update and refactor

Summer school real-world deployment

update and refactor

RPLidar driver

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
are we using it?
refactor

MRS Serial

refactor
important for RTK

MRS LLCP

refactor

build from scratch without the MRS UAV System with just the Multirotor Sim lib

Camera base

does it have an equivalent in ROS2
refactor

F4F

ROS2 problems and regressions

TUI

no roscd
calling services got complicated (nobody wants to write json dictionaries by hand)
no colors without exporting a variable

colcon

no colors
no build-in profiles (I know, mixins exist, but they need to be setup, are stored externally in a file)
colcon build makes new workspace if not called in the root of the workspace
including headers does not prioritize the ones in the workspace (https://colcon.readthedocs.io/en/released/user/overriding-packages.html#sort-include-directories-according-to-the-workspace-order)
no direct control of the number of build threads without exporting a variable

Launch

respawning does not work
not crashing in the launch file will not cause the launch file to crash
launch files need to be "grouped" while being included, otherwise the arguments are going to be overlapping

Containers

The container some times exists

FastRTPS

Causes the node to freeze when service being called from another computer

Zenoh

When the router dies before other nodes (e.g., when stopping an integration test), the other nodes crash

Parameters

All parameters are shown in rqt_reconfigure and can not be removed, only "greyed out"
All components are getting the callback for changing parameters, even for other component's parameters
Missing parameter grouping from rqt_reconfigure

rclcpp

the generic topic subscriber now needs to know the topic type in runtime
the official Timer implementation is very CPU heavy (5x over ROS1, 4x over custom threaded implementation)
comparing incompatible times will throw an exception! this is easy to miss or cause during runtime. Why is C++ library for realtime robotics throwing so many exceptions?
service call is by default async, the sync one needs to be implemented manually; the boiler plate code for both is pretty large

Gazebo custom drone example

refactor

Drone spawner

keep the functionalities
dockerization?

MRS Utils

refactor

MRS PCL Tools

refactor
depends on Ouster, should we rethink this?

Gazebo

refactor the metapackage
- launch files
- configs

Sensor drivers (px4_sitl_gazebo)

our custom fixes to the maagnetometer (did not use inclination)
custom fixes to lidar
custom fixes to GPS plugin

Path loader (Tsoy)

refactor

LIOSAM + core

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?

refactor

Hector + core

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?
is anybody using it?

refactor

Optic flow

do we want to keep it?

refactor if yes

super low priority

POINT LIO + core

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?

refactor

F4F

MRS Modulees msgs

refactor
building of doxygen docs

OpenVins + Core

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?

refactor

remove Gazebo
update and refactor

remove Gazebo
update and refactor

Trajectory loader (Tsoy)

refactor

F4F

ALOAM + core

does it have a newer ROS2 branch?

refactor

F4F

F4F utilizes and deploys these features in an industrial setting

F4F

MRS Errorgraph

refactor
incorporate

MRS Errorgraph viewer

refactor
incorporate

Disarming

imlement disarming key exchange

HW Api

plugin interface
example plugin
plugin manager
doxygen
took me 1 day

MRS UAV testing

the abstraction library
tests
- example tests using the lib