adding more information in readme for initial collaborative prototyping

Author: Edwardius

README.md

@@ -1,3 +1,81 @@
 # Deep ROS
 
 Full ML infrastructure pipeline for ROS2. Includes inference model-agnostic node containers for quick deployment and testing of ML models, as well as sample model farm for building, training, evaluating, and quantizing neural networks.
+
+## Installation
+
+(TODO) Add the base library into the ROS buildfarm
+
+```bash
+sudo apt install ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-deep-ros
+```
+
+## Backend Plugin Installation
+To accomodate different hardware accelerators, deep ros has a library of installable plugins that deal with model loading, memory allocation, and inference for a specific hardware accelerator.
+
+To configure the backend your node should run with, specify the backend in the node's parameters:
+
+```yaml
+sample_inference_node:
+  ros__parameters:
+    # Backend configuration - TensorRT
+    Backend:
+      plugin: "onnxruntime_gpu"
+      device_id: 0
+      execution_provider: "tensorrt"
+```
+
+Each backend has its own subset of parameters.
+
+### `deep_ort_backend_plugin`
+ONNXRuntime CPU Backend. This comes with the base library.
+
+In your package.xml
+
+```xml
+<exec_depend>deep_ort_backend_plugin</exec_depend>
+```
+
+Specify in your parameter file
+
+```yaml
+```yaml
+sample_inference_node:
+  ros__parameters:
+    # Backend configuration - TensorRT
+    Backend:
+      plugin: "onnxruntime_cpu"
+```
+
+### `deep_ort_gpu_backend_plugin`
+Nvidia libraries must be installed separately alongside this plugin. Once installed, `deep_ort_gpu_backend_plugin` will automatically link to the nvidia libraries at runtime.
+
+#### Prerequisites
+Currently, `deep_ort_gpu_backend_plugin` supports the following nvidia configurations.
+
+**TensorRT**: 10.9
+**CUDA and CuDNN**: 12.0 to 12.8
+
+List of compatible `nvidia/cuda` images:
+- "12.8.0-cudnn-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.6.2-cudnn-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.5.1-cudnn-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.4.1-cudnn-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.3.2-cudnn-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.2.2-cudnn8-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.1.1-cudnn8-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+- "12.0.1-cudnn8-runtime-ubuntu22.04"
+
+To download the minimal libraries needed for TensorRT:
+
+```bash
+curl -fsSL -o cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/ubuntu2204/x86_64/cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb \
+    && dpkg -i cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb \
+    && apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
+    libnvinfer10=10.9.0.34-1+cuda12.8 \
+    libnvinfer-plugin10=10.9.0.34-1+cuda12.8 \
+    libnvonnxparsers10=10.9.0.34-1+cuda12.8 \
+    && rm cuda-keyring_1.1-1_all.deb
+```
+
+Note that `12.8` is compatible with all CUDA versions `12.0` to `12.8`