web version of runtime_manager (including webviz)

[xczhanjun]

The runtime_manager in autoware-ai is very convenient, we should have the similar component in core/universe version, but rewriting using JavaScript.

[ghost]

When I was learning about Autoware with Autoware.AI, I found the old Runtime Manager to be incredibly useful. I could start up Autoware with a single command from a single command prompt, and I was able to view and adjust settings without having to manually stop and restart things myself.

When using the AutowareArchitectureProposal repo which had no Runtime Manager, it was much more challenging for me to get things up and running. For example, just changing a setting meant that you had to know the exact name of the setting, or which launch file that contained the setting. Conversely, with the Runtime Manager, I could just browse settings and then search the code for any setting that I was curious about to see if I could learn more about it.

Also, speaking as someone who has delivered Autoware.AI training to university students, it was very straightforward to demonstrate basic exercises with the Runtime Manager and for the students to follow along. If I had had to do the same kind of training with Autoware just using launch files, it would have taken far longer to carry out each demonstration and for the students to carry out the exercises.

[mitsudome-r]

@xczhanjun
Thank you for raising the topic.
Currently, I was thinking of only having a sample launch file where users can customize for their own use case, but I understand that having GUI might be easier for light users or non ROS developers to play around with Autoware.

However, before we start developing the GUI, I would like to first set the scope and usecases of the tool. Runtime manager included features to launch a node, do topic monitoring, playing/recording rosbags, etc. I would like to know if there are any features we would like to add/remove and make clear with the purpose of having the GUI.

As for the implementation, I would completely agree that we should rewrite the code since we were struggling to maintain the code with poor readability. I would still like to discuss which language would be the best. I can think of web based GUi like you mentioned, but I think there is an option of going with rqt just like other ROS GUI tools.

[xczhanjun]

web is eating the world.

[ghost]

@xczhanjun Based on @mitsudome-r's comment, I have created a new Design discussion to talk about the scope and use cases for a new Runtime Manager. If you have any views on what should be included in this tool, and how it should be created, then please feel free to leave a comment!
https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/410