By the end of October the bridge worked from the lab’s own machines, but getting there took a long list of steps by hand. On 4 November the repository moved to the society’s GitHub, became public, and got its first release: version 1.0.0, under the Apache 2.0 licence.
Ready-made images
Building the bridge takes about half an hour, because it compiles a converter for every one of Baxter’s message types. Now GitHub builds the bridge and the other containers once for each release, and a computer downloads them instead. On the lab network the bridge’s image arrived in about 20 seconds.
Three scripts instead of a list of steps
| Script | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|
setup.sh |
once per computer, or per WSL image | installs Docker if it is missing, downloads the images, builds the ROS 2 workspace if ROS 2 is installed |
add_robot.sh |
every session | looks up the robot’s address and this computer’s, picks the ROS 2 network settings, writes the robot’s settings file |
baxter.sh |
in every terminal for Baxter | sets up ROS 2, the bridge’s domain and middleware in that one terminal |
The steps they take come from the lab machines and my laptop, where they were done by hand first. The scripts themselves were tested in a ROS 2 Lyrical container made like a lab machine, but not yet on a real one.
What the lab machines taught us
- Two middlewares. The bridge uses Fast DDS, while the lab’s terminals start with Cyclone DDS. Topics worked between the two, but every service call timed out.
baxter.shnow switches its terminal to Fast DDS, and leaves the others alone for everyone’s other coursework. - Everyone on one network. All lab machines share the university network, so two students’ bridges could see each other. The settings now keep ROS 2 on each machine, and two lab machines were tested side by side that way.
- A folder only root can read. One Python package in the lab’s WSL image can be read by root only, and the build stopped on it.
setup.shmakes such folders readable. - Saving the WSL image. Everything inside WSL is gone after logging out unless the image is saved in the WSL manager. The guides now say so at the top.
Tested for the release
On a lab machine (Ubuntu 26.04, ROS 2 Lyrical, MoveIt 2.15) with robot 1: the bridge from the ready-made image, the examples, RViz, and MoveIt from the machine’s own ROS 2. From my laptop with WSL2, the whole robot check on robot 1: 56 out of 56. The Mobility Base under robot 2, its bridge and driving it. And 153 tests that need no robot.
Not tried yet: robot 2 itself with this version, both real robots at once, and the setup scripts on a real lab machine.
Baxter on a lab machine is the new starting point for everyone.