The Robotics Middleware Framework (RMF) enables interoperability among heterogeneous robot fleets while managing robot traffic that share resources such as space, building infrastructure systems (lifts, doors, etc) and other automation systems within the same facility. RMF also handles task allocation and conflict resolution among its participants (de-conflicting traffic lanes and other resources). These capabilities are provided by various libraries in rmf_core.

This repository contains demonstrations of the above mentioned capabilities of RMF. It serves as a starting point for working and integrating with RMF.

These demos were developed and tested on

• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS & Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

• ROS 2 - Eloquent & ROS 2 - Foxy

• Gazebo 9.13.0 & Gazebo 11.1.0

Setup your computer to accept Gazebo packages from packages.osrfoundation.org.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y wget
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
wget https://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Install all non-ROS dependencies of RMF packages,

sudo apt update && sudo apt install \
  git cmake python3-vcstool curl \
  qt5-default \
  libboost-system-dev libboost-date-time-dev libboost-regex-dev libboost-random-dev \
  python3-shapely python3-yaml python3-requests \
  libignition-common3-dev libignition-plugin-dev \
  g++-8 \
  -y

Setup a new ROS 2 workspace and pull in the demo repositories using vcs,

mkdir -p ~/rmf_demos_ws/src
cd ~/rmf_demos_ws
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/osrf/rmf_demos/master/rmf_demos.repos
vcs import src < rmf_demos.repos

Ensure all ROS 2 prerequisites are fulfilled,

cd ~/rmf_demos_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro <ROS_DISTRO> -yr

The models required for each of the demo worlds will be automatically downloaded into ~/.gazebo/models from Ignition Fuel when building the package rmf_demo_maps. If you notice something wrong with the models in the simulation, your ~/.gazebo/models path might contain deprecated models not from Fuel. An easy way to solve this is to remove all models except for sun and ground_plane from ~/.gazebo/models, and perform a clean rebuild of the package rmf_demo_maps.

cd ~/rmf_demos_ws
source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash
colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE

cd ~/rmf_demos_ws
source /opt/ros/eloquent/setup.bash
CXX=g++-8 colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE

Note: The build will fail if the compiler is not set to g++ version 8 or above.

Answers to frequently asked questions can be found here.

Note: When running the demos on Ubuntu 18.04 + ROS2 Eloquent, you are required to explicitly supply gazebo_version launch argument. Eg: ros2 launch demos office.launch.xml gazebo_version:=9

An indoor office environment for robots to navigate around. It includes a beverage dispensing station, controllable doors and laneways which are integrated into RMF.

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos office.launch.xml

To simulate a delivery

Select pantry and hardware_2 as Start and End waypoints. Ensure Pickup and Dropoff dispensers are set to coke_dispenser and coke_ingestor respectively. Finally, click the Send Delivery Request button in the RViz RMF Panel.

Alternatively, a launch file is configured to achieve the same result.

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos office_delivery.launch.xml 

To request each of the TinyRobot to loop between two points, Select desired Start and End waypoints using the RMF Panel and click the Send Loop Request button. Alternatively,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos office_loop.launch.xml

This demo world shows robot interaction on a much larger map, with a lot more lanes, destinations, robots and possible interactions between robots from different fleets, robots and infrastructure, as well as robots and users. In the illustrations below, from top to bottom we have how the world looks like in traffic_editor, the schedule visualizer in rviz, and the full simulation in gazebo,

To launch the world and the schedule visualizer,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos airport_terminal.launch.xml

To spawn robots into the world and issue tasks to the same,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 run demos airport_terminal_scenario.sh

This command spawns two DeliveryRobots and four TinyRobots in the map. Out of these one DeliveryRobot and two TinyRobots are issued loop request tasks. The other robots are idle and can be issued loop or delivery request tasks via the RMF Panel.

Alternatively, to spawn all the robots without issuing any task orders,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 run demos airport_terminal_spawn_robots.sh

An delivery request may also be submitted via a launch file,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos airport_terminal_delivery.launch.xml

Non-autonomous vehicles can also be integrated with RMF provided their positions can be localized in the world. This may be of value at facilities where space is shared by autonomous robots as well as manually operated vechiles such as forklifts or transporters. In this demo, we can introduce a vehicle (caddy) which can be driven around through keyboard/joystick teleop. In RMF nomenclature, this vehicle is classified as a read_only type, ie, RMF can only infer its position in the world but does not have control over its motion. Here, the goal is to have other controllable robots avoid this vechile's path by replanning their routes if needed. The model is fitted with a plugin which generates a prediction of the vehicle's path based on its current heading. It is configured to occupy the same lanes as the tinyRobot robots. Here, a read_only_fleet_adapter submits the prediction from the plugin to the RMF schedule.

To spawn the caddy into the world,

source ~/rmf_demos_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 launch demos airport_terminal_caddy.launch.xml