Designs deterministic robot startup and shutdown with systemd, launch composition, udev, watchdogs, logs, and recovery.
---
name: robot-bringup
description: >
Patterns and best practices for bringing up a complete ROS2-based robotics system on a robot's
onboard computer, including systemd services, launch file composition, ordered startup, and
production monitoring. Use this skill when configuring a robot to start ROS2 nodes on boot,
writing systemd unit files for ROS2 launch, composing layered launch files for full robot stacks,
setting up watchdog monitoring, configuring udev rules for deterministic device naming, or
debugging boot-time race conditions. Trigger whenever the user mentions robot bringup, robot
startup, systemd for ROS2, ROS2 on boot, launch file composition, robot boot sequence, udev
rules for cameras or serial ports, watchdog for robot systems, automatic restart for ROS2 nodes,
network configuration for multi-machine ROS2, log rotation for robots, graceful shutdown of
robot stacks, or SSH-based remote debugging of robots. Also trigger for environment setup in
systemd (sourcing workspaces), ordered startup with health checks, deterministic device naming,
or any discussion of running ROS2 systems as long-running production services. Covers systemd
on Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 with ROS2 Humble, Iron, and Jazzy.
---
# Robot Bringup Skill
## When to Use This Skill
- Configuring a robot to automatically start its full ROS2 stack on boot via systemd
- Writing systemd unit files that correctly source ROS2 workspaces and set DDS environment
- Composing layered launch files (hardware, drivers, perception, application) into a single bringup… load the full skill through Skill Me