What we saw so far is the ability to model how things should run together. Data Services allow to represent abstract components. Compositions, to bind components together to create some functionality, and Task Contexts represent the actual implementations.

However, there is still the problem of telling the system what should actually run. This step is called system deployment.
At the root of everything are the instance requirements. They describe a subsystem so that the Syskit engine can create the network associated with it. In essence, when creating instance requirements, one picks up what should run where. It represents, for instance, ‘I want a PoseEstimation composition where the orientation child, which is originally declared as an orientation service, is replaced by a XsensImu::Task task context’

Then, these requirements are used in Roby’s action interface to allow to start and stop complete subsystems dynamically. This is going to be presented in the following pages.

Instance Requirements

The instance requirements describe a subsystem that you require to run. The simplest of all is a single component model (either task or composition). For instance:

OroGen::CorridorNavigation::FollowingTask

tells the system that you require a component of type CorridorNavigation::FollowingTask to be running, not giving any other constraints.

Compositions need a bit more information, as you might need to specify composition children. For instance, the composition that handles the CorridorNavigation::FollowingTask above requires a full robot pose, provided by a Base::PoseSrv data service.

TODO: image

Instanciating it therefore requires to tell the system what should be used to provide this pose. This is done by the #use statement:

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation)

where ‘pose’ is the name of the child that is being selected. This name is given in the child declaration with the :as option.

This is assuming that PoseEstimation is a composition that can be instanciated “by itself” (i.e. needs no other information to be instanciated). If it was needing some more specification, you would specify it the same way (don’t worry, there are better ways to write that down)

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation.
    use('orientation' => XsensImu::Task)
  )

The other thing that can be specified in an instance requirement are the task arguments (as in Roby task arguments). This is simply done with #with_arguments:

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  with_arguments(:target_point => Eigen::Vector3.new(10, 12, 0)).
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation.
    use('orientation' => XsensImu::Task)
  )

Finally, a special case of task arguments is the handling of the task contexts configuration. One specifies it with #with_conf:

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  with_arguments(:target_point => Eigen::Vector3.new(10, 12, 0)).
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation.
    use('orientation' => XsensImu::Task.
        with_conf('default', 'high_sampling_rate')
    )
  )

Finally, when selecting a composition child and/or selecting something for a service, one might need to select a service explicitly (for instance because the selected composition / task provides multiple services of the same kind). This is done by providing the service as selection, instead of only the task.

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  with_arguments(:target_point => Eigen::Vector3.new(10, 12, 0)).
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation.pose_srv)

when done on a full instance requirement object, it has to be done at the end (e.g. after the use() and other statements)

Compositions::CorridorNavigation::Servoing.
  with_arguments(:target_point => Eigen::Vector3.new(10, 12, 0)).
  use('pose' => PoseEstimation.
    use('orientation' => XsensImu::Task.
        with_conf('default', 'high_sampling_rate')
    ).pose_srv
  )

Summary

This page explained the general syntax and concepts related to dependency injection in Syskit. However, you probably noticed how it could become pretty tedious for complex systems.

To promote reuse of configured subsystems, as well as allowing to name subsystems, Syskit introduces the concept of profiles. This is the subject of the next page

In general, have a look at the documentation for Syskit::InstanceRequirements to get all the available specifications that can be added to an instance requirement object.