My talk "ROS2 on VxWorks. one Wind River Labs project" at ROS Industrial conference 2019 hits pain points of the ROS Industrial community. Developer journey from the desktop ROS2 development under Ubuntu to the ROS2 embedded software development is the rocky one. Software engineers face difficulties to migrate their ROS2 code from native to the cross-compile environment and tune system for the performance, real-time, security and safety.   Application developers don't want to deal with the complexity of the embedded system anymore. A lack of embedded software developers and usability difficulties make the productivity crisis in the embedded industry very obvious. Let us stop scaring people with bits, bytes, interrupts, and help them to optimize systems. Wind River has created a platform for innovation called Wind River Labs and provides VxWorks SDK for the download. ROS2 on VxWorks is a port of popular Robotics framework to the RTOS and based on the VxWorks SDK. It provides a possibility for the developers to easily switch between Ubuntu and VxWorks development environments. We plan to make in 2020 the VxWorks and Wind River Linux officially supported OSes by the ROS community. Innovate with us on labs.windriver.com

1. © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 on VxWorks
One project on Wind River Labs
A N D R E I K H O L O D N Y I , W I N D R I V E R

2. 2 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
CHEMICAL SECTOR COMMERCIAL BUILDING SECTOR COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR
CRITICAL MANUFACTURING SECTOR DAMS SECTOR
AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE SECTOR
EMERGENCY SERVICES SECTOR ENERGY SECTOR
FINANCIAL SERVICES SECTOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE SECTOR GOVERNMENT BUILDING SECTOR
MEDICAL SECTOR
IT SECTOR
NUCLEAR SECTOR TRANSPORTATION/AUTO SECTOR WATER AND WASTEWATER SECTOR
2 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3. 3 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 32/64 bits on Arm/Intel/MIPS/PowerPC
 Proprietary real-time OS, POSIX PSE52
 Kernel/user space separation, user space optional
 C/C++11/14, possible to develop kernel C++ modules and user apps
 Safety certifiable: DO-178, ISO 26262, IEC 61508
 Toolchain LLVM 8, Dinkumware C/C++ libs
 Proprietary build system
 Kernel shell
 Eclipse-based IDE, Windows/Linux hosts
What is VxWorks RTOS?

4. 4 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
NASA
MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC
Industry Examples

5. TSN
 Hard RT
 safety
 TSN
 Soft RT
 non-safety
 TSN
5G ULNN / WIFI / TSN
EDGE COMPUTE
GATEWAY
COMPUTE
COMPUTE
TITANIUM (STARLING X)
ARM / INTEL
Linux
ROS2 FRAMEWORK
ROS2 APPSROS2 APPS
ROS2 FRAMEWORK
Linux
TSN SWITCH
VxWorks / Linux
ROS2 FRAMEWORK
ROS2 APPS
Hypervisor
ARM /Intel HW
ROS2 FRAMEWORK
ROS2 Apps
Hypervisor
ROS2 Apps
VxWorks WRLinux
SIMULATE
DIGITAL TWINS
LEARN
ML HW
ML FRAMEWORK
ML
SIMULATION HW
SIMULATION ENGINE
GAZEBO SIMULATION
Industrial Profile
MCU HW
ZEPHYR
MICRO ROS OR ROS2
TSN
ARM /Intel HW
ROS2 FRAMEWORK
ROS2 Apps
Hypervisor
ROS2 Apps
VxWorks WRLinux
MCU HW
ZEPHYR
MICRO ROS OR ROS2
MCU HW
ZEPHYR
MICRO ROS OR ROS2
MODEL
HW
UML FRAMEWORK
ROS2 MODEL
DEVOPS
CLOUD
DEVOPS FRAMEWORK
CI/CD PIPELINE

6. 6 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
 Heterogeneous HW: MCU, CPU, GPU, VPU, TCU, FPGA, SOC
 Embedded, Edge, Fog, Cloud
 Sensors: Camera, Lidar, Radar, IMU, Ultrasonic
 Real-time: hard, soft, best effort
 C/C++ programming language
 Not enough SW engineers with embedded development skills
 Many people can‘t program (embedded)
Embedded Development Landscape

7. 7 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
 Heterogeneous HW: MCU, CPU, GPU, VPU, TCU, FPGA, SOC
 Embedded, Edge, Fog, Cloud
 Sensors: Camera, Lidar, Radar, IMU, Ultrasonic
 Real-time: hard, soft, best effort
 C/C++ programming language
 Not enough SW engineers with embedded development skills
 Many people can‘t do not want to program (embedded)
 Stop scaring people with real-time, safety and security
Embedded Development Landscape

8. 8 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Documented ROS Robots
https://robots.ros.org/
Amount of robots grows rapidly, but
where are the new embedded
developers? People don‘t want to
program bit and bytes anymore

9. 9 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Architecture
C/C++ in an
embedded API.
A Robotics
domain specific
API is needed
instead

10. 10 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
Technical Debt grows
http://smackerelofopinion.blogspot.com/2016/01/fixme-and-todo-comments-in-linux-kernel.html
An example of
the technica debt
grow in the kernl
community

11. 11 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
ROS2 Technical Debt
It is probably the
same for ROS2

12. 12 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
Run-time optimization (performance, footprint, RAM, I/O
etc.) is very difficult to handle
http://www.brendangregg.com/ebpf.html

13. 13 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
 Little kids playing with a smartphone, they don‘t know how it works
 Increasing amount of robots versus descreasing amount of embedded
software engineers
 Productivity crisis in the embedded software development?
 Look at ROS2 APIs only C++, C and Python – typical embedded
 TSN protocols
 Machine learning networks
 Security
 Safety
 Little kids playing with a robot?
Usability Problem

14. 14 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
Desktop
Intel CPU
App 1 App N
Intel CPU
App 1 App N

15. 15 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
embedded Linux development
ARM/Intel
multi-core CPU
App 1 App N
Intel CPU
App 1 App N
A journey from Ubuntu desktop to
the embedded Linux e.g. Yocto is
the rocky one:
- Cross compilation
- Complicated Build system
- etc

16. 16 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
embedded real-time
ARM/Intel
multi-core CPU
App 1 App N
RTOS
SoC
Real-
Time
App 1
Real-
Time
App N
Intel CPU
App 1 App N

17. 17 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
embedded real-time, safe and secure
ARM/Intel
multi-core CPU
App 1 App N
RTOS
SoC
Real-
Time
App 1
Real-
Time
App N
Intel CPU
App 1 App N
Safe and
secure OS
Safe HW
Critical
App 1
Critical
App N

18. 18 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
hypervisor
App 1 App N
RTOS
Real-
Time
App 1
Real-
Time
App N
App 1 App N
Safe and
secure OS
Critical
App 1
Critical
App N
Hypervisor
ARM/Intel
multi-core CPU
SoCIntel CPU Safe HW
CI/CD pipeline

19. 19 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Developer Journey
where is the magic button to optimize a run-time behaviour?
App 1 App N
RTOS
Real-
Time
App 1
Real-
Time
App N
App 1 App N
Safe and
secure OS
Critical
App 1
Critical
App N
Hypervisor
ARM/Intel
multi-core CPU
SoCIntel CPU Safe HW

20. 20 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
ROS2 Working Groups
TSC
Safety WG
Tooling
WG
Embedded
WG
Security
WG
Real-time
WG
Usability
WG
Navigation
WG
In my view a usability WG is
missing which will make
ROS2 more user friendly

21. 21 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
https://labs.windriver.com
Platform for Innovation

22. 22 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
https://labs.windriver.com/vxworks-sdk
For the first time Wind
River provide a
downloadable SDK for the
non-commercial usage

23. 23 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
https://labs.windriver.com/ros2-for-vxworks
ROS2 is built on top
of the VxWorks SDK
Developers can
deploy and run
VxWorks on ARM and
Intel

24. 24 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Dashing Release VxWorks Port
ROS 2 dependencies: ASIO, tinyxml2, OpenCV
LLVM C++11/C++14
VxWorks SR620
ROS 2 VxWorks SDK
Python 3.8
Cmake / autotools build primitives
Intel 64-bit / Arm / QEMU
POSIX
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/release-latest/ros2.repos
• Complete ROS 2 Dashing release has been ported to
VxWorks
• Build using colcon, the same look and feel as a native ROS
2 build (command line)
• OpenCV integration
• Python (ported, not tested)
• Only graphical packages (like RViz) are not ported and stay
on Ubuntu
based on the ROS 2 dashing release
approx. 200 ROS 2 packages
OSS_BUILD layer
UNIX_EXTRA layer
ROS 2 Apps

25. 25 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
VXWORKS7-ROS2-BUILD (A Helper Repo)
 https://github.com/Wind-River/vxworks7-ros2-build
 Based on the VxWorks SDK
 Download the SDK
 Setup the development environment and do: make
 ROS2 middleware and dependencies will be built
 Board support:
– RPI3, UP2 and QEMU
– RPI4 and others to come
 Docker build:
– VxWorks SDK

26. 26 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
VXWORKS7-LAYER-FOR-ROS2 (VxWorks patches)
 https://github.com/Wind-River/vxworks7-layer-for-ros2
 ROS 2 dependencies patches:
– ASIO, tinyxml2
 ROS 2 patches:
– fastcdr, fastrtps, rcl, rclutils, etc.

27. 27 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
ROS2 Build Under VxWorks
 From the command line (ROS 2 native build)
– colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-force-configure --cmake-args -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF
 The same look and feel as a ROS 2 native build
– source $SDK_PATH/toolkit/wind_sdk_env.linux
– colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-force-configure --cmake-args -
DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$(CMAKE_MODULE_DIR)/buildspecs/cmake/rtp.cmake -
DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$PRJ_WS/install;$EXPORT_DIR/usr/root -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF

28. 28 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
TURTLEBOT3 Support will come soon

29. 29 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
 VxWorks, WR Linux Yocto, StarlingX, Hypervisor, TSN, Zypher
 VxWorks SDK published on WR Labs
 ROS2 SDK on VxWorks and WRLinux
– ARM (RPI4), Intel, QEMU
– DevOps (containerized)
 VxWorks SDK preintegrated with Eclipse IDE and VSCode
 Participation in Real-time WG, Safety WG and Embedded WG
 Find us on github - https://github.com/Wind-River/vxworks7-ros2-build
Wind River contribution

30. 30 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
2019

31. 31 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. AUTOSAR 07-Nov-2018
VxWorks
WRLinux
2020

32. 32 © 2019 WIND RIVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Innovate with us on labs.windriver.com