ROS Explorer

A visual, web-based interface for examining the ROS graph.

• See all the nodes, topics, services, and parameters.
• Click on one to see what other nodes, topics, or services they are connected to.
• See topic and service types.
• Add/edit/delete parameters.

Tested on Indigo, but likely works with newer ROS distros.

Running

ROS Explorer is a simple webpage, which you can serve from the www directory however you like, such as with python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8595 . You must be running a websocket server beforehand: roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch.

We also provide two launch files for convenience.

• roslaunch ros_explorer ros_explorer.launch: Runs a Python server from the www directory and opens ROS Explorer in a web browser. To use this, you need xdg-open and python -m SimpleHTTPServer. The website will be served on http://localhost:8595.
• roslaunch ros_explorer ros_explorer_websocket.launch: Same as above but also runs a websocket server.

User notes

• By default, the websocket URL is determined from the host the webpage is being served from (e.g., localhost, robot.university.edu).
• You can scroll horizontally to view names that have been cut off by holding Shift while scrolling.
• Press Ctrl+F to search for a name.

Developing

ROS Explorer is built with Polymer.

Install Node.js using nvm if you don’t already have it:

• Install nvm
• nvm install node

Install the Polymer CLI if you don’t already have it:

• npm install -g polymer-cli

Download the frontend dependencies:

• cd frontend
• bower update

Run a local development server:

• polymer serve
• Visit http://localhost:8081 in a web browser.

Robot web server

ROS Explorer works with RWS.