Future Work

ros_comm 1.

/2010-12-15 ros_comm 1.5 planning meeting

ros_comm 1.7

• rosnode: 'machines' command <<Ticket(ros 3650)>>

• rostest: remove deprecated bare commands

• deploy rosbuild2
• ros_msgs stack
• port code to use rospkg instead of roslib (REP 114)
• move message code from roslib into ros_msgs
• polled topics (REP 106)
• roslaunch:
  • meta-tag for roslaunch?
  • scripting API for roslaunch
• Mature rosjava/android
• mature interfaces
• mature app_manager

Brainstorming

• subscribe to sub-topics if sub-topic is a message
• multiple masters
• roslaunch

  • network API: launch processes, as well as query state of existing processes. See <<Ticket(ros 1128)>> for ideas.

  • roslaunch-console: curses GUI for interacting with roslaunch-based processes
  • optional include: add an attribute to include that makes "file not found" not a fatal error (to facilitate optional files).
  • substitution arg based on shell command: similar to how environment variables can be used to build names, create an option that uses the output of a shell command (e.g. date, hostname).
• Networking:
  • Transports:
    • UDP support in rospy
    • Compressed transports
    • UDT?
    • Spread?
    • ZeroMQ?
    • multicast UDP
  • Shared memory transport (C++ only). Need to run tests that demonstrate the benefit of shared memory.
  • Support compression of serialized data

  • Handle firewalls, one-way connectivity (see rosproxy prototype)

  • Published and/or sent timestamps in transport header
• Logging
  • Unify client libraries for setting logging levels, expose ability to externally set logging level in rospy/roslisp
• Security
  • Client libs (e.g., vet roscpp for security issues)
  • Embed security into wire protocol?
  • Resource management, and related permissions issues (e.g., prevent a node from controlling motors)
• Pub/Sub:
  • Support for optional fields in messages
  • Default values for message fields
  • Export doc strings from nodes / topics / params = semantic description of node API
  • Subscriptions to sub-messages (possibly just subscribe to actual sub-message fields and not allow subscribe to primitives)
• ROS spec
  • new separator to distinguish between topics and fields (for rostopic, rxplot, and potentially other tools)
  • Interfaces prototype in ROS (e.g. camera, actions)
  • Provide a standard way to report status of a node.
  • introspection into who is calling service calls
• Other:

  • Remote-launch roswtf. For inspiration, see closed ticket https://code.ros.org/trac/ros/ticket/1130

  • Handle backward time jumps in some way
    • wire only supports un-acknowledged 'poll' signal. Fancier semantics, like synchronous poll, and push at some rate, are implemented in the client lib.