Software ‐ FKIE Multimaster

FKIE Multimaster Topic Sync Configuration

Explains the bringup_fkie package and provides a guideline to add or remove topics. Provides an overview of how to configure FKIE Multimaster for topic synchronization across multiple PCs using individual launch files.

Launch File Configuration

Each PC has a dedicated fkie_<pc>.launch file, which defines:

• GUI Usage: Enable/disable GUI.
• Master Sync: Enable/disable synchronization.
• Nodes to Sync: Specify which nodes/topics are shared or received.

---

Configuration Details

PI

• Purpose: Provides its topics to other PCs; does not require external information.
• Master Sync: Disabled.
• Master Discovery: Streams data to specified robots:

  <rosparam param="robot_hosts">[jetson,nuc,pi,opc]</rosparam>

LPC

• Purpose: Receives velocity commands and shares /tf, /tf_static, and state estimation (odometry).
• Master Sync: Enabled (to receive data from Jetson).
• Master Discovery: Configured to discover Jetson:

  <rosparam param="robot_hosts">[jetson]</rosparam>

• Node Sync: Specific nodes synchronized from Jetson:

  <rosparam param="sync_nodes">["/gt_box/simple_planner/*"]</rosparam>

Jetson, NUC, and OPC

• Purpose: Sync with all PCs while excluding unnecessary topics from ANYmal.
• Master Discovery:

  <rosparam param="robot_hosts">[jetson,nuc,pi,opc,lpc]</rosparam>

• Master Sync: Includes specific nodes/topics:

  <rosparam param="sync_nodes">["/gt_box*", "/joy_manager", "/state_estimator*", "/twist_mux", "/anymal_tf_publisher*"]</rosparam>

---

Adding or removing topics

• Adjust configurations to refine synchronization for specific use cases.
• Use the ~ignore_nodes, ~ignore_topics, and ~ignore_services parameters to filter unnecessary data.
• Selective synchronization based on sync_nodes was the easiest.

Debugging tools for networking

using iftop for network statistics to ROS1 sudo apt-get install iftop