Free fleet status + suggestion to use of Github Projects

[Achllle]

I see that there are a lot of changes underway to free_fleet. Some of those changes happen too fast to be worthwile updating the multirobotbook for, so it's hard for someone to understand where things stand, e.g.:

• Should I use master vs develop vs some other branch?
• When is the split up in terms of server-client due?
• What are the capabilities of the fleet server and what does the OpenRobotics team have on its priority list to implement?
• Are we going to see documentation for hooking up to a fleet adapter soon?

Zooming out to make a follow-on point: These questions are specific to free fleet, but I have several similar questions for the other repos. Some of these questions pertain to a roadmap, and I realize it's hard to predict timelines, but it would be good to see what on the roadmap is a wishlist vs 'we're working on this right now'. There are several ways to communicate that, but I wanted to pitch the use of Github Projects. We started using it over at the NASA-JPL Open Source Rover repo and it's a quite effective WAY to communicate status on things outwards (and internally). The roadmap in the book would then be higher level and require fewer PRs to keep up-to-date.

[codebot]

I'll let @aaronchongth respond to the specific questions about FreeFleet.

Thanks for the suggestion of a public project board. Indeed, it is hard to predict timelines, particularly in an R&D context where we are juggling long-range design/development with short-range somewhat unpredictable demo crunches. Just like any R&D project; it's nothing unusual. In terms of "what we're working on," we have attempted to split the roadmap here into "things under active development" and "wish list items:" https://osrf.github.io/ros2multirobotbook/roadmap.html But of course it takes effort to maintain such lists and keep them up-to-date.

Obviously there is a balance to be achieved between "spending all our time communicating" and "spending all our time writing code." There is a happy middle ground in there somewhere. We will look into Github Projects. Thanks for this suggestion. Some sort of public multi-repo board could be great.

[aaronchongth]

Hello @Achllle !

Should I use master vs develop vs some other branch?

For now, it will still be master. Major changes are incoming but we will make sure it is properly documented on the multirobotbook and tested before any merges happen.

When is the split up in terms of server-client due?

The develop branch introduces various abstractions instead of a split, we intend to have the new systems replace the old ones by the end of Q2 2021.

What are the capabilities of the fleet server and what does the OpenRobotics team have on its priority list to implement?

The current free fleet server in master is capable of communicating with the clients over CycloneDDS, aggregating robot statuses, and giving commands to the robots. It has a number of ROS 2 topic interfaces which can be used to monitor robots as well as command them.

The develop branch will deprecate the server in favor of a proper fleet manager. It introduces the use of a navigation graph, tracking each client through the navigation graph, and is released as a library so users will implement their own use cases for the manager, for example a UI or an application integrated with a fleet adapter.

The current priority is to implement a fleet adapter using the develop branch, by the end of the prototyping phase, we hope to freeze the API for free fleet, and focus on external applications that implement free fleet abstractions.

Are we going to see documentation for hooking up to a fleet adapter soon?

For the master branch, the interaction with a full_control fleet adapter remains the same as mentioned in https://osrf.github.io/ros2multirobotbook/integration_free-fleet.html#free-fleet.

Let me know if you have any other questions! We'll try our best to make sure documentation and our roadmaps are up-to-date.

[mxgrey]

Following up on this, we're currently migrating to use GitHub Projects for all of our open source project management. The new project board can be found here: https://github.com/orgs/open-rmf/projects/3.