日本語のREADME

Rclex

Rclex is a ROS 2 client library for Elixir.

This library lets you perform basic ROS 2 behaviors by calling out from Elixir code into the RCL (ROS Client Library) API, which uses the ROS 2 common hierarchy.

Additionally, publisher-subscriber (PubSub) communication between nodes and associated callback functions are executed by tasks, which are part of a lightweight process model. This enables generation of and communication between a large number of fault-tolerant nodes while suppressing memory load.

About ROS 2

ROS (Robot Operating System) is a next-generation Robot development framework. In both ROS and ROS 2, each functional unit is exposed as a node, and by combining these nodes you can create different robot applications. Additionally, communication between nodes uses a PubSub model where publisher and subscriber exchange information by specifying a common topic name.

The biggest difference between ROS and ROS 2 is that the DDS (Data Distribution Service) protocol was adopted for communication, and the library was divided in a hierarchical structure, allowing for the creation of ROS 2 client libraries in various languages. This has allowed for the creation of a robot application library in Elixir.

For details on ROS 2, see the official ROS 2 documentation.

Recommended Environment

Currently, we use the following environment as the development target:

• Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa)
• ROS 2 Foxy Fitzroy
  • NOTE: Dashing Diademata on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS does not work well since v0.6.0 (we try to continue to support it, see #89)
• Elixir 1.12.3-otp-24
• Erlang/OTP 24.1.5

As an operation test, we check the communication with nodes implemented by rclcpp using rclex/rclex_connection_tests.

We also run CI in multiple different environments on GitHub Actions. However, please note that we cannot guarantee the operation of all of these versions due to our limited development resources.

The pre-built Docker images used in CI have published on Docker Hub. You can also try the power of Rclex with it easily.

Installation

rclex is available in Hex.

You can install this package into your project by adding rclex to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:rclex, "~> 0.7.0"}
  ]
end

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs.
You can find the docs at https://hexdocs.pm/rclex.

Usage

Currently, the Rclex API allows for the following:

1. The ability to create a large number of publishers sending to the same topic.
2. The ability to create large numbers of each combination of publishers, topics, and subscribers.

Please reference examples here. Also note the usage alongside the sample code.

Maintainers and developers (including past)

• @takasehideki
• @HiroiImanishi
• @kebus426
• @shiroro466
• @s-hosoai