Use of Terminator with ROS

Asked by Joe Drake

Hi Stephen,

We love Terminator so thanks for adding that to the world.

But I have some issues that I was wondering if you could give me some guidance.

I am using Terminator with ROS (Robot operating system - link). The reason Terminator is great for this is because in a ROS system many terminal windows are open simultaneously and commands launched in the various windows are interacting with each other.

But this is all very complicated to a non-programmer so I want to write a simple bash script that will serve as the UI and provide the step by step procedure for performing a test routine controlled by ROS packages.

I want that bash to, for example:

1. open terminator,
2. run the ROS command "roscore" starting the ROS master
3. open another window
4. run another ROS command in that other window
5. repeat steps 3 and 4 a number of times addressing a different window each time

It's easy enough to do steps 1 and 2 in a bash but running "roscore" via "terminator -e roscore; bash" for example blocks any other steps in the script because the script is waiting for a response from that command which never comes until you kill the command. I need a solution for this.

Ignoring that problem for a moment, if I just wanted to go straight to steps 3-5 I need bash commands that will cause Terminator to open new windows and execute commands in them. I have not found a way to do that yet.

I understand that I can set the config file to start up with a specified number of windows with an initial command for each one. This may work to some extent but the UI still needs to specify additional commands later in the test sequence so I need command lines within the script that allow me to address a specific window within Terminator and execute a command in that window repeat this in turn with each window. I have not seen a way to do this yet either.

Any comments or guidance you could provide would be very helpful.

Thanks,

Joe

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