ROS TSC Meeting Notes 2019-01-17

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ROS 2 TSC Meeting Minutes: January 17th, 2019

These notes are being published a bit later than usual due to travel schedules. We’ll aim to be more timely with publishing these notes following future meetings.

  • Attendees:
    • Allison (TRI)
    • Bob S (TARDEC)
    • Brian G. (Open Robotics)
    • Brian S. (LGE)
    • Dejan (Apex.AI)
    • Dirk (Open Robotics)
    • Doug (Amazon)
    • Karsten (Bosch)
    • Lou (Microsoft)
    • Louise (Open Robotics)
    • Matt D (TARDEC)
    • Matt H (Intel)
    • Pyo (ROBOTIS)
    • Seonman (LGE)
    • Tully (Open Robotics)
  • (5 mins) [update] ROS copyright status (Brian)
    • Pending questions (type of mark, description, and industry categories) answered; waiting on legal feedback.
  • (5 mins) [update] DCO bot status (Dirk)
  • (5 mins) [update] Elevator pitch on ROS 2 (Brian)
    • From Matt H.: ROS2 benefits key talking points - I had requested we create a short list of talking points we can all quickly refer to when asked what the benefits of ROS2 are over ROS. I know there was a presentation on this at ROSCon a few years back but it’s not really easy to point people to that. I think a “30-second elevator pitch” is more like what I’m looking for. I believe you said you would work on that?
      • No update; Brian to generate
  • (5 mins) [discussion] New WGs (Matt H.)
    • Is there any interest from TSC members for a Real-time WG and a Safety WG? If so, do we have anyone who would lead either of those WGs?
      • DP: Apex has been working on this. Can share their existing internal research.
      • MH: Can be a forum for collaboration,
      • KK: Interest from Bosch side
      • MD: Large group interested in realtime from government sources
      • Dejan is willing to lead a realtime group with Apex, Bosch and ROS-M participants.
    • Updates from existing WGs
      • Security
        • DF: Ray Cole from AWS is current lead; need to check on whether to continue as-is.
      • Navigation
        • MH: on hiatus since Crystal; just getting restarted
  • (10 mins) [discussion] New members (Brian)
    • Feedback on Process
      • KK: It would be nice to have some metrics for contributions measurements in the applications
      • What is in the ROS Core and subject to evaluation? It’s specifically vague to not box ourselves in.
      • DT: Should past contributions be required versus an intent to make contributions?
      • Feedback to applicants to encourage continuing engagement for future reevaluation.
    • Ratified adding 2 new members: Acutronic Robotics, eProsima
  • (20 mins) [update & discussion] Debrief on Crystal release (Dirk)
    • What got in (high level view)
      • C++ client library
        • Actions
      • Python client library
        • Parameters
        • Clock, time, rate, timers
      • Launch
        • Life cycle nodes
        • Nesting of launch files
        • Passing parameters
      • Rosbag
        • Record and playback of binary messages
        • Command line tool
      • Feature packages
        • Image transport
        • Gazebo ROS packages
        • Navigation2
        • rqt
      • index.ros.org
    • What slipped (high level view)
      • Actions in Python (might be released in a patch release)
      • IDL pipeline (-> Dashing)
      • Launching components (-> Dashing)
      • Rosbag playback of ROS 1 bag files
      • Buildfarm improvements (almost complete, will be rolled out independently)
      • Audit Memory Management (some parts have landed, but still ongoing)
      • Logging improvements, e.g. log to /rosout topic (might be released in a patch release)
      • SROS2
    • Syncs / patch releases
      • Syncs will happen roughly every two weeks (if there are new / updated packages), announced via Discourse (as for any ROS distro) Coordinated on Discourse
      • Patch releases (meaning releases of core packages maintained by Open Robotics) happen on demand, will be available with the next sync
    • Process changes that are already planned for future distributions
      • Schedule high-impact and/or invasive changes early in the cycle
      • Set freeze dates earlier in the cycle and being strict about them
        • Allowing time for the community to support testing
      • Plan resources for increased review needs before the freeze dates
      • Shorter turnaround time on tickets in general
    • Take feedback from the group on other changes
  • (10 mins) [proposal] Dashing release plan (Dirk)
    • Release date: Fri. May 31st 2019
    • Dates prior to the release
      • Mon. Apr 8th: First releases of core packages available (alpha)
        • Testing can happen from now on (some features might not have landed yet)
      • Thu. May 2nd: API freeze for core packages
      • Mon. May 6th: Updated releases of core packages available (beta)
        • Additional testing of the latest features
      • Thu. May 16th: Code freeze
        • Only bug fix releases should be made after this point
        • New packages can be released independently
      • Mon. May 20th: Updated releases of core packages available (release candidate)
      • Wed. May 29th: Freeze rosdistro
        • No PRs for Dashing on the rosdistro repo will be merged (reopens after the release announcement)
    • Support period and LTS status
      • Dashing is the first ROS 2 LTS, with 2 years’ support (through May 2021)
    • Tentative plan for future releases
      • E-turtle release: Nov 22nd 2019
        • Sandwiched between ROSCon (Oct 31-Nov 1) / IROS (Nov 3-8) and US Thanksgiving (Nov 28)
        • Not an LTS, 1 year support
      • F-turtle release (same time as ROS 1 Noetic): May 2020
        • LTS, likely longer support period (e.g., 3+ years)
        • The goal is to target Ubuntu 20.04
    • Supported platforms (update to REP 2000) proposal:
      • Tier 1:
        • Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic), amd64 and ARMv8
          • Same as for Crystal
        • macOS 10.14 (Mojave)
          • Upgrade from 10.12 (Sierra)
        • Windows 10
          • Same as for Crystal
      • Tier 2:
        • Discontinue from-source support for Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial)
      • Tier 3:
        • Debian 9 (Stretch)
          • Same as for Crystal
          • Option: if Debian 10 (Buster) is available in time, upgrade
      • No change on RMW implementations
      • Minimum dependency versions will increase with the removal of Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) (and eventually Debian 9 (Stretch))
      • Request for information about Armhf vs arm64 vs amd64 usage:
  • (15 mins) Roadmap for Dashing (Dirk)
    • Open Robotics planned items (high level view):
      • Launch
        • Launching components, passing arguments to components, CMake API to create shared libraries of components
        • Enable testing, replacing the legacy API
        • XML(/YAML) front-end for launch
      • IDL pipeline
      • Efficient image pipeline, address shortcomings in intra-process comms
      • Parameter
        • Declaration of ranges, rqt-based UI
        • Read-only parameters
      • Improve memory management
      • Improve performance and reliability
      • Port to ROS 2
        • rosbridge_suite
        • Support migration of MoveIt
      • CI for simulation-based testing of navigation
      • Buildfarm infrastructure
        • Roll out incremental CI jobs
        • RPM packages
      • Need to add:
        • improved docs and testing (to support LTS label)
        • Update navigation2 to use native ROS 2 components (actions, dynamic params)
    • Solicit additions from TSC members
      • (Pyo) support cartographer_ros package. There’s been a lot of changes on v1.0.0, It does not work with the current ROS 2 Crystal version. so we are porting to ROS 2. We are preparing the real mobile robot to run actually SLAM and navigation in the ROS 2 Dashing version. https://github.com/ROBOTIS-GIT/cartographer_ros/tree/crystal
      • (Dejan) next generation of integration test framework
      • (Lou) Windows builds, CI, Simulation and Testing on Azure DevOps
        • ROS 1 / ROS 2 coexistence, ros1_bridge
      • (Karsten) considering diagnostics
      • (Karsten) ros_control (pending MoveIt! port progress)
      • (Doug) input to come via tickets
      • (Dejan) funding eProsima on performance improvements in FastRTPS
      • (Brian Shin) improving ROS 2 OpenEmbedded support, working with ROBOTIS for TB3
  • Looking forward for next meeting. Opinions on timing past cycle has been 6 weeks?
    • A little faster at 4 weeks would be good for keeping things going. +1 Lou, Doug, Dejan
      • Gerkey will do that and schedule out through dashing release