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.

Reference Example¶

Launching a ROS System

Further Information and Resources¶

ROS2 python launch Node action

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.py 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 ~/ros2_ws/src
ros2 pkg create myworkcell_support --dependencies myworkcell_core

<run colcon build in your build terminal>

source ~/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash

Create a directory for launch files (inside the new myworkcell_support package):
```
cd src/myworkcell_support
mkdir launch
```

Create a new file, workcell.launch.py (inside the launch directory) with the following skeleton:

import launch
import launch_ros

def generate_launch_description():
    return launch.LaunchDescription([
        # launch actions here...
    ])

In the space marked by the comment about ‘launch actions’, insert lines to bring up the nodes outlined in the problem statement. See the reference documentation for more information:
```
launch_ros.actions.Node(
    name='fake_ar_publisher_node',
    package='fake_ar_publisher',
    executable='fake_ar_publisher_node',
),
launch_ros.actions.Node(
    name='vision_node',
    package='myworkcell_core',
    executable='vision_node',
),
```
- There are other options you can set for these Node actions, but name, package, and executable are the most common ones.
Try to run the launch file:
```
ros2 launch myworkcell_support workcell.launch.py
```
You should see an error that the launch file was not found. This is because it only exists in the src/ directory, and the ros2 tool will only work with files in the install/ directory. Therefore, the launch file must be installed.
Add an installation rule to CMakeLists.txt in your myworkcell_support package, after the find_package section, and before the BUILD_TESTING section:
```
install(DIRECTORY launch DESTINATION share/${PROJECT_NAME}/)
```
Now build the workspace to install the launch file and try to run it again:
```
ros2 launch myworkcell_support workcell.launch.py
```
Note: Both nodes were automatically started. Press Ctrl+C to close all nodes started by the launch file.
The expected behavior is that you should see none of the usual messages 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' argument to each of the nodes in your launch file (see below). Current versions of ROS do not seem to follow this behavior, though, and output INFO/WARN messages to screen regardless of output setting.
```
launch_ros.actions.Node(
    name='fake_ar_publisher_node',
    package='fake_ar_publisher',
    executable='fake_ar_publisher_node',
    output='screen',
),
launch_ros.actions.Node(
    name='vision_node',
    package='myworkcell_core',
    executable='vision_node',
    output='screen',
),
```
- Even without the output='screen' argument, the logging statements are still broadcast to any ROS nodes that listen to the global /rosout topic and captured in a log file.
- Important: Remember that ros2 works on the launch file in the install/ directory and so you won’t see the new behavior without running colcon build again to reinstall the file. To avoid having to do this for every change during development, you can run colcon build with a --symlink-install option which will install a link to the file in the src/ directory so any changes will be seen immediately.

Challenge Exercise¶

ROS2 also supports [XML] and YAML launch files. Review the example here and try to recreate the launch file we just made in XML or YAML instead.