Scope and use cases for a new "Runtime Manager" GUI for Autoware Core/Universe

[ghost]

Based on the "web version of runtime_manager (including webviz)" discussion, there seems to be interest in creating a GUI to run Autoware in a similar way to the Runtime Manager in Autoware.AI. The Runtime Manager was a very convenient way of starting Autoware, editing settings and launching/relaunching nodes etc, all from a single GUI, and having such a tool would be extremely useful for new developers and users of Autoware.

However in order to move the discussion on to actual development, we need to consider the following questions:

• What is the scope of this tool?
• What are its use cases?
• Are there any features that should be added to or removed from the Autoware.AI Runtime Manager?
• Should the tool be updated to be a web-based GUI, or can we just use rqt as per other ROS GUI tools?

[maxime-clem]

I do not have experience with the runtime manager in Autoware.ai but as a developer let me describe my ideal (and probably overambitious) Autoware GUI.

• Open a launch file.
  • see the graph of nodes and topics (like rqt_graph) that will be launched.
  • select a node to edit its launch parameters.
  • select a topic to change its name.
  • start the launch file.
• After starting a launch file.
  • see the graph of nodes and topics (like rqt_graph) that are running.
  • select a node to see information about its inputs, outputs, and to edit its parameters (like rqt_reconfigure).
  • select a topic to see information about its rate, publishers/subscribers, and possibly to print the messages.
  • visual information when a node crash, or when a topic does not receive messages.
  • restart a crashed node, manually publish data to some topic.

I believe such GUI would greatly help with debugging issues. The features are not specific to Autoware so this could be a general ROS2 project.

[CagriCatik]

After my searching I found the following document/manual Autoware - Users Manual.
The source code for Autoware.AI can also be found there Runtime Manager Dialog.
As it looks, IMHO, it looks like a migration project.

[mitsudome-r]

@raminterpl will post a comment about requirements for the GUI by the end of this week.

[mitsudome-r]

ping @raminterpl

[ghost]

@CagriCatik In theory, it's just a migration, but the source code is a single file that is over 3000 lines long! It would probably take less time to rewrite the entire thing from scratch that to try and understand all of that code and then make it work with Core/Universe. Thus if we're going to do rewrite the entire thing, then we may as well gather requirements.

There is also some overlap with another discussion that I created about a potential replacement for RViz. This application covers some of the ideas suggested by @maxime-clem.
https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/2700

[raminterpl]

Runtime Manager Tool requirements

Scope:

Runtime Manager enables autoware users to execute and monitor functions such as localization, object detection, and path following.
Runtime manager can be integrated with simulator and visualize localization on 3-D map,path following, ego vehicle and other objects.

Use case:

1.) To "Quick start" to start Autoware Core/Universe

2.) To Integrate Rviz or any new tool or any New simulator approved by AWF (Ex: Tier IV) for testing/debugging

3.) To monitor CPU load and memory usage

4.) To select "Topics/Nodes" used and to edit parameters

5.) To do "Remote control"

6.) To perform ROS bag data recording/Replay

7.) To Connect through external interfaces (Ex: AndriodTablet, Oculus)