Robot Web Tools

Robot Web Tools

• Robot Web Tools- libraries for developing web-based interfaces for controlling robots, visualizing data, and interacting with robot systems directly from a web browser
  • rosbridge: A middleware that translates ROS messages into JSON and exposes a WebSocket interface.
  • Robot Web Tools: A JavaScript library that allows communication with ROS from a web browser via WebSockets.
    • It handles publishing and subscribing to ROS topics, calling services, and interacting with action servers.
    • This allows non-ROS platforms, like web browsers, to communicate with ROS nodes.
  • web_video_server: A tool that streams video from ROS to a web browser.
  • robot_pose_publisher: A tool that publishes the robot’s position and orientation in a format accessible via the web.

Rosbridge

Setup rosbridge_suite for ROS2

https://medium.com/@rafaazahra_93357/how-setup-rosbridge-suite-for-ros2-roslib-js-library-74b918db1a64

• Install rosbridge_suite for ROS2 humble

sudo apt update
 sudo apt install ros-humble-rosbridge-suite

• Launch rosbridge_websocket server (Note: humble uses Python v10)

ros2 launch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket_launch.xml
# [rosbridge_websocket-1] [INFO] [1726600761.629841995] [rosbridge_websocket]: Rosbridge WebSocket server started on port 9090

• To customize the WebSocket port, add a port argument

ros2 launch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket_launch.xml port:=8080

• Verify that the server is listening on the specified port

netstat -an | grep 9090

tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:9090            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN
tcp6       0      0 :::9090                 :::*                    LISTEN

• Test the WebSocket connection in the console
  • This script will try to open a WebSocket connection to ws://localhost:9090 and log the status in the console.

var ws = new WebSocket('ws://localhost:9090');
ws.onopen = function() {
    console.log('WebSocket connection opened.');
};
ws.onerror = function(error) {
    console.error('WebSocket error: ', error);
};
ws.onmessage = function(event) {
    console.log('WebSocket message: ', event.data);
};

https://wiki.ros.org/roslibjs

• API