By Shenhui Zhang, Boyi Liu

HNU, RobAI-Lab🤖 & HKUST, Hong Kong.

**Now ROS-Ethereum only support the messages of 'Odometry' type. ROS-Ethereum will support more types of messages, such as pictures. **

ROS-Ethereum serves as a kind of interaction scheme for ROS and Ethereum in a secure and convenient way. ROS-Ethereum is built on SM algorithm family which includes SM2, SM3 and SM4, TCP/IP transport protocol, Ethereum and, of course, ROS. As a user, what you need to do to get ROS-Ethereum works is just to input some key information(Like names and types of topics etc.).

ROS-Ethereum presents a user-friendly framework that blocks the complicated implementation process of detailed interaction scheme along with a unified Ethereum Blockchain network reserving for interaction. Our goal is to present a kind of Critical Information storage and sharing media with security and flexibility to facilitate the information communication in all ROS systems within the world.

Thanks for the key-exchange scheme based on SM algorithm family, ROS-Ethereum is equipped with a complete secure encryption mechanism in the cost of a slight loss in time-consuming performance. Every user has a unique identity and related interactive permissions like authority granting, information check and messages storage in the Ethereum network. Through this, every user having registered in the network can not only do the job of persistent, tamper proof storage of critical information, but also can conduct trusted information exchange communication with the other authorized party, out of the intervention of third party.

ROS-Ethereum is used for robots build upon ROS Melodic and related codes are run in Anaconda3 envs along with redis. To prepare envs, you should prepare two virtual python envs, one in pthon2.7 and the other in python3.8. And for the redis setup, please refer to this.

conda activate -n py2 python=2.7
conda activate -n py3 python=3.8

Then, you should set up redis module in the two virtual envs.

conda activate py2
conda install redis redis-py
conda activate py3
conda install redis redis-py

Cloning the codes and move the folderlisten_node to your src of your workspace and run the following commands:

catkin_make

And export the path of your workspace to the ~/.bashrc:

sudo vim ~/.bashrc
:i
export CATKIN_WS=/...
:wq
source ~/.bashrc

To register the identity, please run the following codes ($catkin_ws is the location of your workspace):

cd $catkin_ws/src/listen_node/scripts/Ultimate
conda activate py3
python register.py

And follow the instructions.

Run the following codes to initialize the variables:

cd $catkin_ws/src/listen_node/scripts/Utlimate
conda activate py2
python console

When you enter the topics and message types, you can run the following codes to start monitoring. But, before you start monitoring, please make sure that the redis module runs normally.

cd $catkin_ws/src/listen_node/scripts/v2/Utlimate
conda activate py2
python Monitor.py

ROS-Ethereum will support more message types in the future and will be equipment with the decryption module to facilitate the decryption of messages obtained from the Ethereum.

If you have any concerns here, please post as Github issues, or send an e-mail to Shenhui Zhang by [email protected] or Boyi Liu by [email protected].