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Mitigate Fast DDS /usr/local shadowing for reproducible robot bringup #364

@pvkumara5

Description

@pvkumara5

AirStack Version
0.19.0-alpha.1

Describe the bug
A clear and concise description of what the bug is. Does it occur on hardware or simulation? If simulation, which simulator?

In simulation (isaacsim), robot bringup can fail when using Fast DDS (rmw_fastrtps_cpp) due to FastDDS/FastCDR runtime library resolution conflicts (likely /usr/local vs ROS Jazzy libs).
This appears as middleware/typesupport runtime failures during liveliness runs.
Temporary workaround: force Cyclone DDS (rmw_cyclonedds_cpp) for robot container.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Use default Fast DDS setup (no Cyclone override).
  2. Run: airstack test -m liveliness --sim isaacsim --num-robots 1 --stress-iterations 1 --stable-duration 60 --gui -v
  3. Observe bringup/runtime failures related to FastRTPS/FastCDR/typesupport on affected environments.

Expected behavior
Liveliness test should bring up sim + robot + gcs consistently across machines using the same repo/image configuration.

Screenshots
N/A - Indication that this error occurs is when liveliness test fails with sentinel nodes not up and MAVROS is not published.

Host Compute (please complete the following information):

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (driver 580.65.06)
  • CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K (24 cores / 32 threads)

Additional context
This is environment-sensitive: some users may not hit it if local library paths are clean.
Root issue is reproducibility/consistency across locals and CI.
Proposed long-term fix: pin DDS dependencies and prevent /usr/local FastDDS/FastCDR shadowing; enforce explicit middleware config checks in startup/CI.

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