Rclex

Rclex is a ROS 2 client library for Elixir.

This library lets you perform basic ROS 2 behaviors by calling out from Elixir code into the RCL (ROS Client Library) API, which uses the ROS 2 common hierarchy.

Additionally, publisher-subscriber (PubSub) communication between nodes and associated callback functions are executed by tasks, which are part of a lightweight process model. This enables generation of and communication between a large number of fault-tolerant nodes while suppressing memory load.

About ROS 2

ROS (Robot Operating System) is a next-generation Robot development framework. In both ROS and ROS 2, each functional unit is exposed as a node, and by combining these nodes you can create different robot applications. Additionally, communication between nodes uses a PubSub model where publisher and subscriber exchange information by specifying a common topic name.

The biggest difference between ROS and ROS 2 is that the DDS (Data Distribution Service) protocol was adopted for communication, and the library was divided in a hierarchical structure, allowing for the creation of ROS 2 client libraries in various languages. This has allowed for the creation of a robot application library in Elixir.

For details on ROS 2, see the official ROS 2 documentation.

Usage

Currently, the Rclex API allows for the following:

The ability to create a large number of publishers sending to the same topic.
The ability to create large numbers of each combination of publishers, topics, and subscribers.

Making it Work

Please reference examples here. Also note the usage alongside the sample code.

Environments

We tested following versions:

Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
ROS 2 Dashing Diademata
Elixir 1.9.1-otp-22
Erlang 22.0.7

Please let us know if you can operate this library with another environment.

Installation

rclex is available in Hex.

You can install this package into your project by adding rclex to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:rclex, "~> 0.3.1"}
  ]
end