ROS Tools and Utilities

1. ROS Command Line

ROS has a variety of command line and GUI tools that we will use extensively.

When in doubt use the command line -h or --help flag and read the documentation to learn more.

I've listed below the command line tools that I used most frequently. But, keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. ROS maintains fairly thorough documentation and tutorials which I recommend you peruse.

Additionally, checkout the ROS cheatsheet.

2. Startup

roscore

This command starts up the ROS Master.

rosrun

This command runs executables located in ROS packages. Usage: rosrun <package> <executable>.

roslaunch

This command executes launch files located in ROS packages. Usage: roslaunch <package> <launch file>.

rviz

The command rosrun rviz rviz starts ROS's 3D visualization GUI.

ROS_MASTER_URI & ROS_IP

These two environment variables need to be setup correctly in order to use ROS in an distributed environment.

Use: export ROS_MASTER_URI="http://<hostname>:11311 and export ROS_IP=<ip-addr>

Where <hostname> is either the DHCP-resolvable hostname or the IP address of the computer running the ROS Master and <ip-addr> is your local IP address. Note the machine running the ROS Master does not need to set these environment variables.

3. Tools

rostopic

This tool is for debugging and interacting with ROS Topics.

rosservice

This tool is for debugging and interacting with ROS Services.

rosparam

This tool is for getting and setting [ROS Parameters](http://wiki.ros.org/Parameter Server).

rosmsg

This tool is for displaying information about ROS Message types.

rossrv

This tool is for displaying information about ROS Service types.

rosbag

This tool is for recording and playing back messages from ROS topics.