Connect Create® 3 to NVIDIA® Jetson™ and set up ROS 2 Galactic

Important

This is community-submitted content. Please feel welcome to submit PRs for additions or corrections.

Before you start

Attention

These directions are written for someone with experience with embedded Linux and basic embedded computers.

It is highly recommended to read through the getting started document for your NVIDIA® Jetson™ developer kit before beginning:

Step-by-step

Getting Started Guide portion

Download the SD card image for your Jetson platform and write onto a microSD card.
Complete the getting started guide (listed above) until you complete the initial setup.

Alter "USB Device Mode" to apply static IP

To alter the Jetson's "USB Device Mode" feature (specifically, disabling DHCP server and self-assign a static IP address);
1. First, create a flag file to store IP address for Jetson to be used with Create3.
```
sudo bash -c 'echo "192.168.186.3" > /opt/nvidia/l4t-usb-device-mode/IP_ADDRESS_FOR_CREATE3_ROBOT.conf'
```
2. Then, modify the "nv-l4t-device-mode-runtime" service script (/opt/nvidia/l4t-usb-device-mode/nv-l4t-usb-device-mode-runtime-start.sh). The complete file is here.
Connect micro-B end of the USB cable from Create® 3 robot to the micro-B USB port of Jetson. Then check if the static IP address is set by issuing ifconfig command.
```
$ ifconfig l4tbr0

l4tbr0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.186.3  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.186.255
        inet6 fe80::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x20<link>
        inet6 fe80::ecb6:edff:feac:7dd5  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether ee:b6:ed:ac:7d:d5  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 169  bytes 36206 (36.2 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 1644  bytes 213306 (213.3 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
```
Warning

Be sure that the USB/BLE toggle on the robot's adapter board is set to the USB position.

Note

If you ever want to stop using the Jetson device for Create® 3 and re-enable the original USB Device Mode feature (so that you can connect to your Windows PC in headless style), you can simply remove the flag file, or execute the following.

sudo mv /opt/nvidia/l4t-usb-device-mode/IP_ADDRESS_FOR_CREATE3_ROBOT.conf /opt/nvidia/l4t-usb-device-mode/IP_ADDRESS_FOR_CREATE3_ROBOT.conf.bak

Start ROS 2 Galactic container

The recommended way to run ROS2 on Jetson is to use pre-built Docker container images.

Enable NVIDIA Container Runtime with Docker integration, if this is the first time running containers on Jetson, to allow access to GPU from containers.

Edit /etc/docker/daemon.json to be the following.
```
{
    "runtimes": {
        "nvidia": {
            "path": "/usr/bin/nvidia-container-runtime",
            "runtimeArgs": []
        }
    },
    "default-runtime": "nvidia"
}
```

Use jetson-containers' script to simplify the invocation of docker run command.

git clone https://github.com/dusty-nv/jetson-containers/
cd jetson-containers
scripts/docker_run.sh -c dustynv/ros:galactic-ros-base-l4t-r32.6.1

Install additional ROS 2 packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y ros-galactic-ros-base python3-colcon-common-extensions python3-rosdep ros-galactic-rmw-fastrtps-cpp ros-galactic-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp ros-galactic-irobot-create-msgs

Set the default network interface by setting Cyclone DDS configuration.
```
export CYCLONEDDS_URI='<CycloneDDS><Domain><General><NetworkInterfaceAddress>l4tbr0</NetworkInterfaceAddress></General></Domain></CycloneDDS>'
```
Attention

If you are using CycloneDDS (Galactic default) and want the Jetson to talk to the robot over USB and a laptop via Wi-Fi, you will need to take extra steps to setup CycloneDDS to use multiple interfaces. You will need to create a CycloneDDS XML configuration file with both USB and Wi-Fi interfaces and then set the CYCLONEDDS_URI environment variable to its path. See CycloneDDS Multiple Network Interfaces. Note the differences in Jetson USB and Wi-Fi interface names from the documentation.

Check to ensure Create® 3 topics appear

ros2 topic list

You should get

/battery_state
/cmd_audio
/cmd_lightring
/cmd_vel
/dock
/hazard_detection
/imu
/interface_buttons
/ir_intensity
/ir_opcode
/kidnap_status
/mouse
/odom
/parameter_events
/rosout
/slip_status
/stop_status
/tf
/tf_static
/wheel_status
/wheel_ticks
/wheel_vels

Check if it read a message on a topic

ros2 topic echo odom

You should see continuous repetition of output like following.

---
header:
stamp:
    sec: 1639388519
    nanosec: 209038110
frame_id: odom
child_frame_id: base_link
pose:
pose:
    position:
    x: -0.04380033165216446
    y: -0.005811699666082859
    z: 0.0
    orientation:
    x: 0.0037933308631181717
    y: 0.0016814800910651684
    z: 0.03521127253770828
    w: 0.999371349811554
covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
twist:
twist:
    linear:
    x: 0.0
    y: 4.972387477511303e-07
    z: -5.194771269447518e-09
    angular:
    x: -0.0006566781590969611
    y: -0.0019107190640370627
    z: 0.0
covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]