This ROS 2 package is the entry point for building micro-ROS apps for different embedded platforms.

• Supported platforms
  • Standalone build system tools
• Dependencies
• Quick start
• Building
  • Creating micro-ROS firmware
  • Configuring micro-ROS firmware
  • Building micro-ROS firmware
  • Flashing micro-ROS firmware
• Building micro-ROS-Agent
• Contributing
• Purpose of the Project
• License
• Known Issues / Limitations
• Papers

Supported platforms

This package provides tools and utils to crosscompile micro-ROS with just the common ROS 2 tools for the following platforms platforms.

Note that this package provides basic support only, intended in particular for ROS developers who are new to microcontrollers. Micro-ROS components for each platform are available and provide a deeper and more flexible integration with the platform-specific build systems.

¹ Community supported, may have lack of official support

² Support for compiling apps in a native Linux host for testing and debugging

³ a valid CMake toolchain with custom crosscompilation definition is required

Standalone build system tools

micro_ros_setup provides access to standalone build system tools using the component command. After building this package just run:

ros2 run micro_ros_setup component --help

micro-ROS standalone module for specific platforms are:

• a standalone micro-ROS component for Renesas e² studio and RA6M5: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in Renesas e² studio and RA6M5 MCU family.
• a standalone micro-ROS component for ESP-IDF: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in any Espressif ESP32 IDF project.
• a standalone micro-ROS module for Zephyr RTOS: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in any Zephyr RTOS workspace.
• a standalone micro-ROS module for Mbed RTOS: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in any Mbed RTOS workspace.
• a standalone micro-ROS module for NuttX RTOS: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in any NuttX RTOS workspace.
• a standalone micro-ROS module for Microsoft Azure RTOS: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in a Microsoft Azure RTOS workspace.
• a standalone micro-ROS module for RT-Thread RTOS: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in a RT-Thread workspace.
• a standalone micro-ROS app for TI Tiva™ C Series: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in a exas Instruments Tiva™ C Series.
• a set of micro-ROS utils for STM32CubeMX and STM32CubeIDE: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in STM32CubeMX and STM32CubeIDE.
• a library builder for PlatformIO: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in PlatformIO.
• a precompiled set of Arduino IDE libraries: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in the Arduino IDE for some hardware platforms.
• a precompiled set of Raspberry Pi Pico SDK libraries: this package enables the integration of micro-ROS in the Raspberry Pi Pico SDK.

Dependencies

This package targets the ROS 2 installation. ROS 2 supported distributions are:

Some other prerequisites needed for building a firmware using this package are:

sudo apt install python3-rosdep

Building for Android needs Latest Android NDK to be installed and the following environment variables to be set:

• ANDROID_ABI: CPU variant, refer here for details.
• ANDROID_NATIVE_API_LEVEL: Android platform version, refer here for details.
• ANDROID_NDK: root path of the installed NDK.

Quick start

Download here the micro-ROS docker image that contains a pre-installed client and agent as well as some compiled examples.

Building

Create a ROS 2 workspace and build this package for a given ROS 2 distro (see table above):

source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash

mkdir uros_ws && cd uros_ws

git clone -b main https://github.com/micro-ROS/micro_ros_setup.git src/micro_ros_setup

rosdep update && rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y

colcon build

source install/local_setup.bash

Once the package is built, the firmware scripts are ready to run.

You can find tutorials for moving your first steps with micro-ROS on an RTOS in the micro-ROS webpage.

Creating micro-ROS firmware

Using the create_firmware_ws.sh [RTOS] [Platform] command, a firmware folder will be created with the required code for building a micro-ROS app. For example, for our reference platform, the invocation is:

# Creating a FreeRTOS + micro-ROS firmware workspace
ros2 run micro_ros_setup create_firmware_ws.sh freertos olimex-stm32-e407

# Creating a Zephyr + micro-ROS firmware workspace
ros2 run micro_ros_setup create_firmware_ws.sh zephyr olimex-stm32-e407

Configuring micro-ROS firmware

By running configure_firmware.sh command the installed firmware is configured and modified in a pre-build step. This command will show its usage if parameters are not provided:

ros2 run micro_ros_setup configure_firmware.sh [configuration] [options]

By running this command without any argument the available demo applications and configurations will be shown.

Common options available at this configuration step are:

• --transport or -t: udp, serial or any hardware specific transport label
• --dev or -d: agent string descriptor in a serial-like transport (optional)
• --ip or -i: agent IP in a network-like transport (optional)
• --port or -p: agent port in a network-like transport (optional)

Please note that each RTOS has its configuration approach that you might use for further customization of these base configurations. Visit the micro-ROS webpage for detailed information about RTOS configuration.

In summary, the supported configurations for transports are:

¹ Community supported, may have lack of official support

Building micro-ROS firmware

By running build_firmware.sh the firmware is built:

ros2 run micro_ros_setup build_firmware.sh

Flashing micro-ROS firmware

In order to flash the target platform run flash_firmware.sh command. This step may need some platform-specific procedure to boot the platform in flashing mode:

ros2 run micro_ros_setup flash_firmware.sh

Building micro-ROS-Agent

Using this package is possible to install a ready to use micro-ROS-Agent:

ros2 run micro_ros_setup create_agent_ws.sh
ros2 run micro_ros_setup build_agent.sh
source install/local_setup.sh
ros2 run micro_ros_agent micro_ros_agent [parameters]

Contributing

As it is explained along this document, the firmware building system takes four steps: creating, configuring, building and flashing.

New combinations of platforms and RTOS are intended to be included in config folder. For example, the scripts for building a micro-ROS app for Crazyflie 2.1 using FreeRTOS is located in config/freertos/crazyflie21.

This folder contains up to four scripts:

• create.sh: gets a variable named $FW_TARGETDIR and installs in this path all the dependencies and code required for the firmware.
• configure.sh: modifies and configure parameters of the installed dependencies. This step is optional.
• build.sh: builds the firmware and create a platform-specific linked binary.
• flash.sh: flashes the binary in the target platform.

Some other required files inside the folder can be accessed from these scripts using the following paths:

# Files inside platform folder
$PREFIX/config/$RTOS/$PLATFORM/

# Files inside config folder
$PREFIX/config

Purpose of the Project

This software is not ready for production use. It has neither been developed nor tested for a specific use case. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards, e.g., ISO 26262.

License

This repository is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

For a list of other open-source components included in ROS 2 system_modes, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.txt.

Known Issues / Limitations

There are no known limitations.

If you find issues, please report them.

Papers

If you want to cite micro-ROS, please cite the following book chapter (PDF available at Springer Link):

Kaiwalya Belsare, Antonio Cuadros Rodriguez, Pablo Garrido Sánchez, Juanjo Hierro, Tomasz Kołcon, Ralph Lange, Ingo Lütkebohle, Alexandre Malki, Jaime Martin Losa, Francisco Melendez, Maria Merlan Rodriguez, Arne Nordmann, Jan Staschulat, and Julian von Mendel: Micro-ROS. In: Anis Koubaa (ed.) Robot Operating System (ROS): The Complete Reference (Volume 7), Springer, pp. 3–55, 2023. (Online since 2 February 2023.)

@INBOOK{Belsare_et_al_2023_Micro-ROS,
  author = {Kaiwalya Belsare and Antonio Cuadros Rodriguez and Pablo Garrido S\'{a}nchez and Juanjo Hierro
            and Tomasz Ko\l{}con and Ralph Lange and Ingo L\"{u}tkebohle and Alexandre Malki
            and Jaime Martin Losa and Francisco Melendez and Maria Merlan Rodriguez and Arne Nordmann
            and Jan Staschulat and and Julian von Mendel},
  title = {Micro-ROS},
  editor = {Anis Koubaa},
  booktitle = {Robot Operating System (ROS): The Complete Reference (Volume 7)},
  year = {2023},
  publisher = {Springer},
  pages = {3--55},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-09062-2_2}
}