ERC Remote Base Docker Image

This Docker image is intented to be used by the teams as a base image for providing custom software in the ERC Remote competition. The image can be extended using FROM command in another Dockerfile:

FROM ghcr.io/europeanroverchallenge/erc-remote-image-base:latest

For an example and more information, check the ERC-Remote-Navigation-Example repository.

This image is our most tested setup for connecting real hardware available on the ERC Remote competition with the Freedom Robotics platform. We advise against using any other setups (for example, using different ROS distribution) as we can't guarantee they will work during the competition.

Features

The Dockerfile extends the ros:noetic image, which is a Ubuntu 20.04 distribution with ROS Noetic installed. Apart from that, it:

• Installs the Freedom agent - The agent will connect to the device on the Freedom Robotics platform to let the team control the robot.
• Sets the password for the root account - This is needed for logging via Freedom Robotics SSH tunnel.
• Adds 2 python scripts:
  • freedom_register.py - Creates the credentials file for connecting to the Freedom Robotics platform (based on the environment variables) and registers the agent as a init.d service.
  • freedom_keep_alive.py - Starts the Freedom agent service and ensures it stays alive by restarting it whenever it exits.
• Adds an entrypoint that:
  • Exports the ROS_IP and ROS_MASTER_URI variables, that were passed to the started container, to a system-wide variable configuration (/etc/environment file) - This ensures that a correct ROS network configuration is exported when starting any new shell session (for example, when connecting via SSH).
  • Starts the Freedom agent using the aforementioned scripts.
  • Runs the command passed to the container.

Acknowledgements

The freedom_register.py and freedom_keep_alive.py scripts come from this gist which is a part of this guide.