onav-lab

OutdoorNav 2.0 usage examples and tools. This is a personal extension of Clearpath's official OutdoorNav documentation, meant to help people get started and get more out of OutdoorNav. It began as a dev container with a handful of API examples and has grown from there.

Open an issue if you have an example request.

Unofficial

This is a personal project, kept on my own time and account. It isn't official Clearpath material or a supported product, and it doesn't replace the documentation. For the authoritative reference, use the official OutdoorNav user manual and the clearpath_outdoornav repository. I keep it public because it has saved me time and might do the same for someone else.

What's here

docker/ is a general-purpose ROS 2 (Jazzy) dev container for talking to a real robot or a sim. It carries committed transport profiles, runs on its own, and is where the examples run.

examples/ holds single-file OutdoorNav API examples written against raw rclpy, grouped by maps, missions, control, and ops, along with a few reusable patterns. See examples/README.md.

mini-projects/ collects notes toward larger, multi-file examples that aren't built yet.

Quick start

cd docker
docker compose pull
docker compose run --rm dev

Connecting

Transport is set by a committed profile instead of environment variables you have to remember. The primary target is a real robot, which uses Fast DDS with the robot's discovery server. Switching to sim is one flag.

# real AMP: run this on the robot, since the discovery server is on the robot's loopback
docker compose --env-file real-amp.env run --rm dev

# sim: CycloneDDS multicast
docker compose --env-file sim.env run --rm dev

	real amp (real-amp.env)	sim (sim.env)
RMW	rmw_fastrtps_cpp	rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
Discovery	Fast DDS discovery server 127.0.0.1:11811	multicast
Domain	per robot (robot.yaml, system.ros2.domain_id)	25

Run python3 examples/ops/connect_real_robot.py first to confirm the connection. Since a real robot runs its discovery server on loopback, run this on the robot. Connecting from another machine needs a bridge, and a Cloudflare TCP tunnel isn't allowed under the ToS. From there, see examples/.