ROS2 Installation and Configuration Guide

For this project, we use the ROS2 Jazzy Jalisco version in Ubuntu 24.04. Here is the Installation tutorial from ROS2 Documentation.

Installing ROS2

System setup

Set locale

locale  # check for UTF-8

sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

locale  # verify settings

Enable required repositories First, ensure that the Ubuntu Universe repository is enabled.

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe

Now add the ROS 2 GPG key with apt.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg

Then add the repository to your sources list.

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null

Install development tools (optional) Necessary if you need to build ROS packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ros-dev-tools

Install ROS2

Update your apt repository and ensure your system is up to date before installing new packages.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install ROS2 Desktop:

sudo apt install ros-jazzy-desktop

Install communication libraries, message packages, and command line tools.

sudo apt install ros-jazzy-ros-base

Configuring ROS2

concurrent-log-handler~~

echo "source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Check environment variables

Sourcing ROS 2 setup files will set several environment variables necessary for operating ROS 2. If you ever have problems finding or using your ROS 2 packages, make sure that your environment is properly set up using the following command:

printenv | grep -i ROS

Check that variables like ROS_DISTRO and ROS_VERSION are set:

ROS_VERSION=2
ROS_PYTHON_VERSION=3
ROS_DISTRO=jazzy

The `ROS_DOMAIN_ID` variable

Once you have determined a unique integer for your group of ROS 2 nodes, you can set the environment variable with the following command:

export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=<your_domain_id>

To maintain this setting between shell sessions, you can add the command to your shell startup script:

echo "export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=<your_domain_id>" >> ~/.bashrc

The `ROS_AUTOMATIC_DISCOVERY_RANGE` variable

By default, ROS 2 communication is not limited to localhost. The ROS_AUTOMATIC_DISCOVERY_RANGE environment variable allows you to limit ROS2 discovery range. Using ROS_AUTOMATIC_DISCOVERY_RANGE is helpful in certain settings, such as classrooms, where multiple robots may publish to the same topic, causing strange behaviors.