Provenance Recording with ROS2

PROJECT

This code repo models a running ROS 2 system into its equivalent Prov format (Developed for ROS 2 Eloquent running on Ubuntu 20.04).

Requirements

Before cloning this repository make sure that you have ROS2 installed in your system and source it in the terminal.

Description of Prov Model

The outlines relating to the Prov Model have been defined in the file Prov_Model.md. This file describes the basic outlay of the system and the approach used to model the system

Setting up your system

First clone the repository to your computer To download utilized libraries:
1) cd to the directory where requirements.txt is located. 2) Optional: activate your virtualenv 3) Run the below command in the shell:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Necessary: Launch your ROS system which you’d like to record

There are two methods to use the ROS2Prov Software:

I) Recommended and easier method: To run the GUI:
1) In a new terminal, cd to the directory where GUI_prov.py is located 2) Run the below command in the terminal:

python3 GUI_prov.py

You’ll find three buttons on the GUI:

  • Record: Records the Information about the ROS 2 system. Once recording as been started, it will continue as long as it receives an interrupt Ctrl + C.
  • Dummy Prov Model: This runs the code for and displays the dummy prov model which shows a sample Prov Model of a ROS 2 System with two Nodes communicating with each other.
  • ROS Snapshot: It takes a snapshot of the ROS System for the instant when the button is pressed and exports an equivalent Prov Model.

II) Manual method: To extract the data from the ROS system using the python file:
1) In a new terminal, cd to the directory where ROS2-data-extraction-updated.py is located 2) Run the below command in the terminal:

python3 ROS2-data-extraction-updated.py

This file has a start-stop functionality. The data extraction starts once you run the file using the above mentioned command. To terminate the process, please press Ctrl+C. The data will be stored in a .csv file with the name “Data_storage.csv”. This file can be found in the src folder of the repository.

To take a snapshot of the current system and to view it:
1) In a new terminal, cd to the directory where single_instance_prov_generator.py is located 2) Run the below command in the terminal:

python3 single_instance_prov_generator.py

3) You can find the Prov Model files in the folder ROS2Prov Model This file will take the information about the current running nodes, topics etc and generate the prov model based on it.

Future Work

  • Currently we can get a single time snapshot of the system (i.e. the data for the current instant of time) and convert it into a provenance model. We also have the functionality to store the data for a given ROS 2 System. We can extend this to a real-time system which takes the data and converts it into a prov model in real-time till the stop button is pressed.
  • Modelling other elements of a ROS System such as Services, Actions etc.
  • Support for working with Graph Databases (i.e. Neo4j)

Github repository: The repository can be found here