Adding vehicle interface from Autoware.Auto

[HaoruXue]

Background

The racing WG is starting to work on porting the VESC interface package from Autoware.Auto, which has a dependency on the vehicle_interface that act as a base class for all vehicle interface nodes in Autoware.Auto. @mitsudome-r and I are considering the best practice for doing this, as the package is complicated with safety state machine and other features that may or may not be necessary for Universe. A couple of questions need to be addressed:

1. What topics and messages to subscribe/publish
2. What safety features to consider
3. How to expand on the base interface
4. What to remove / add to the existing vehicle interface package

Some considerations

The current vehicle_interface is simply a base class node which is subclassed by various implementation packages such as lgsvl_interface and vesc_interface. To launch on different vehicle/simulator, the child node is launch directly.

The ROS Pluginlib is a potential way of expanding the base vehicle interface. This way different vehicle platforms would all just launch the vehicle_interface node, and provide a plugin supplied from vehicle-specific plugin package.

[mitsudome-r]

@TakaHoribe Do you have any comments?

[mitsudome-r]

There was also discussion whether there should be a multiplexer function in the vehicle interface to choose between autonomous commands and joystick command.
https://gitlab.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.auto/AutowareAuto/-/merge_requests/1381#note_989753332

[HaoruXue]

I see a complete vehicle_interface design tree in the doc, with previous discussions on the specifics linked. However ther have been no issue or PR on it since.

Joystick is listed in the design as an additional input to vehicle_interface. If this architecture is good as it is, then I can go ahead to start working on the vehicle_interface and vesc_interface.

[xmfcx]

https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/2657

This was the arch wg meeting on the vehicle interface, it might help.

[HaoruXue]

I've made an issue and some additional thoughts about the Autoware.Auto's vehicle_interface design here: autowarefoundation/autoware.universe#1451