AMBF Dockerfiles with Visualization

Note:

The Docker files in this repo are built on top of Tiryoh/docker-ros-desktop-vnc (which builds on top of fcwu/docker-ubuntu-vnc-desktop). The resulting Docker images allow graphical visualization by either using a web browser or VNC.

Build Steps:

Please install Docker based on the official instructions: Afterward, depending upon which Ubuntu / ROS is preferred (Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic OR Ubuntu 18.04 with ROS melodic), build the image using the correct Dockerfile.

E.g.

cd docker-ambf/noetic
docker build -t collaborativerobotics/ambf-ros:noetic .

The build process can take a little while.

How to run:

After succesfully building the Docker image, a Docker container can be instantiated with the following command:

docker run --name ambf-ros-noetic -p 6080:80 -p 5900:5900 -v /dev/shm:/dev/shm collaborativerobotics/ambf-ros:noetic

Once running, you can connect VNC to the docker container using "localhost:5900" as the address (or whatever port you set above). The VNC viewer should take you inside a Linux desktop environment (see picture below). AMBF can now be run as usual by following these instructions.

If you stop the container (purposefully or restart your machine), it can be re-run by using the "name" that we used for it earlier as follows.

docker start ambf-ros-noetic

To stop the container when you're finished, open another terminal and type:

docker stop ambf-ros-noetic

Note: to keep changes you make in VNC desktop environment, you can also make your own private docker repo to save local changes to this container: https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/ (see docker commit, docker push)