Network settings for ROS 2 and Autoware#

Autoware nodes communicate through a ROS 2 middleware (RMW, the ROS middleware interface). The Ansible playbook of the source installation installs CycloneDDS (rmw_cyclonedds_cpp) and adds export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp to ~/.bashrc. The default kernel and middleware settings drop large messages such as point clouds and images, so you must apply the settings on these pages before you run Autoware.

The Autoware Docker images include a CycloneDDS configuration file for the lo interface. Their entrypoint also tries to enable multicast on lo and to apply the kernel settings of the DDS page. These two steps work only when the container runs with --privileged or --cap-add=NET_ADMIN.

Single computer setup#

When all Autoware nodes run on one computer, configure one of these middlewares:

• DDS settings for ROS 2 and Autoware: tune the kernel network buffers and configure CycloneDDS to use lo, the loopback interface. This is the default and most tested setup. It needs multicast on lo, because DDS discovery uses multicast and Linux disables it on lo by default.
• Zenoh settings for ROS 2 and Autoware: use rmw_zenoh_cpp and a Zenoh router instead of DDS.

Multi computer setup#

Do these steps when Autoware runs on more than one computer, or when a simulator runs on another computer:

1. Apply the DDS settings on every computer.
2. Follow Communicating across multiple computers with CycloneDDS to select the network interface and to synchronize the clocks.