Launch Files¶

In this exercise, we will explore starting groups of nodes at once with launch files.

Motivation¶

The ROS architecture encourages engineers to use ‘’nodes’’ as a fundamental unit of organization in their systems, and applications can quickly grow to require many nodes to operate. Opening a new terminal and running each node individually quickly becomes unfeasible. It’d be nice to have a tool to bring up groups of nodes at once. ROS ‘’launch’’ files are one such tool. It even handles bringing roscore up and down for you.

Reference Example¶

Roslaunch Examples

Further Information and Resources¶

Roslaunch XML Specification

Debugging and Launch Files

Scan-N-Plan Application: Problem Statement¶

In this exercise, you will:

Create a new package, myworkcell_support.
Create a directory in this package called launch.
Create a file inside this directory called workcell.launch that:
1. Launches fake_ar_publisher
2. Launches vision_node

You may also choose to launch myworkcell_core node with the others or keep it separate. We often configure systems with two main launch files. In this example, fake_ar_publisher and vision_node are “environment nodes”, while myworkcell_node is an “application” node.

“Environment” Launch File - driver/planning nodes, config data, etc.
“Application” Launch File - executes a sequence of actions for a particular application.

Scan-N-Plan Application: Guidance¶

In your workspace, create the new package myworkcell_support with a dependency on myworkcell_core. Rebuild and source the workspace so that ROS can find the new package:
```
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin create pkg myworkcell_support --catkin-deps myworkcell_core
catkin build
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash
```
Create a directory for launch files (inside the new myworkcell_support package):
```
roscd myworkcell_support
mkdir launch
```
Create a new file, workcell.launch (inside the launch directory) with the following XML skeleton:
```
<launch>

</launch>
```
Insert lines to bring up the nodes outlined in the problem statement. See the reference documentation for more information:
```
<node name="fake_ar_publisher" pkg="fake_ar_publisher" type="fake_ar_publisher_node" />
<node name="vision_node" pkg="myworkcell_core" type="vision_node" />
```
- Remember: All launch-file content must be between the <launch> ... </launch> tag pair.
Test the launch file:
```
roslaunch myworkcell_support workcell.launch
```
Note: roscore and both nodes were automatically started. Press Ctrl+C to close all nodes started by the launch file. If no nodes are left running, roscore is also stopped.
Notice that none of the usual messages were printed to the console window. Launch files will suppress console output below the ERROR severity level by default. To restore normal text output, add the output="screen" attribute to each of the nodes in your launch files:
```
<node name="fake_ar_publisher" pkg="fake_ar_publisher" type="fake_ar_publisher_node" output="screen"/>
<node name="vision_node" pkg="myworkcell_core" type="vision_node" output="screen" />
```