How to configure CycloneDDS in MATLAB to communicate with WSL/Docker/VM?

When using CycloneDDS as the ROS 2 middleware (RMW), MATLAB fails to discover nodes running on any of the virtualized environments in the same host, such as WSL, Docker, or Virtual Machine.

Answer 1

[Abhishek]

CycloneDDS may not be able to evaluate if communication is possible across multiple network interfaces, unless you explicitly configure them. To configure desired network interfaces, follow the steps below:

1. Open a MATLAB® session.
2. Create a file named “cyclonedds.xml”.
3. Copy and paste the following XML content into the file.

<CycloneDDS xmlns="https://cdds.io/config" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="https://cdds.io/config https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-cyclonedds/cyclonedds/master/etc/cyclonedds.xsd">
    <Domain>
        <General>
            <Interfaces>
                <NetworkInterface name="vEthernet (WSL (Hyper-V firewall))"/>
            </Interfaces>
            <DontRoute>true</DontRoute>
        </General>
    </Domain>
</CycloneDDS>

• Set the value of <NetworkInterface name=""/> in the code to define each network interface.For example, if your interface is vEthernet (WSL (Hyper-V firewall)), add <NetworkInterface name="vEthernet (WSL (Hyper-V firewall))"/>.
• Set the General/DontRoute tag to prevent automatic routing that can interrupt communication when multiple interfaces are configured.

4. In MATLAB command window, run the following command to set the 'CYCLONEDDS_URI’ environment variable to point to the “cyclonedds.xml“ file.

setenv("CYCLONEDDS_URI", "<path/to/cyclonedds.xml>")

5. After you set the environment variable, run the following command in the MATLAB command window to clear existing resources and then list the nodes available in network:

clear all;
ros2 node list