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Emmanuel Kring edited this page Jun 10, 2020 · 8 revisions

RVMI workspace setup

These are the installation guides for installing the RVMI software for robot control. The software is currently running on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64bit and ROS Kinetic and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64bit and ROS Melodic.

Table of contents

  1. Fresh install
  2. Setup workspace
  3. User guides

Fresh ROS install

If you want to use SSH to download repositories you need first to:
Create a new SSH key
Adding an SSH Key to your github account

If you just formatted you computer, you can configure your machine by using the pre-made script , which selects automatically the right distro for you or install ROS manually by following the instructions here.

After the installation, source ROS (this line should be added also to your bash configuration ~/.bashrc):

source /opt/ros/<ROS_DISTRO>/setup.bash

Here <ROS_DISTRO> must be replaced with the installed one (e.g. melodic).

Setup workspace

The guide below assumes that you have ROS configured as explained above and you want to install the robot level code in /home/user/rvmi_ws. If you want to install in a different folder, substitute the rvmi_ws with your folder name where appropriate.

Since the packages to sync are several, we manage the workspace with rosinstall files, to ensure easy installation, and simple way update to the latest version.

Some of the repositories are private in the RVMI github. To gain access to the repositories, contact Bjarne Grossmann ([email protected]) or Francesco Rovida ([email protected]).

First, create and download repositories:

cd ~
mkdir -p rvmi_ws/src && cd rvmi_ws
wstool init src https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RVMI/rvmi_workspace_setup/master/config/arm_motion_base.rosinstall

You can merge the arm_motion_base.rosinstall with different configurations (have a look into config folder for all the options):

  • arm_motion_base.rosinstall: robot drivers, bh_robot description, low_level_logic, skiros and general skills
  • vision.rosinstall: realsense camera driver, vision packages and skills
  • skiros_examples.rosinstall: skiros plus skills examples

You can do this with the RVMI bash command that will be available after catkin has been built (see below).

Install dependencies

First, install the standard ROS dependencies and build the workspace:

rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro=$ROS_DISTRO -y
catkin build

Source the workspace (this line should be added also to your bash configuration ~/.bashrc):

source ~/rvmi_ws/devel/setup.bash

and install additional dependencies:

rosrun rvmi_workspace_setup install_dependencies.sh

In case package is still missing, try to search for it and install it manually:

apt-cache search ros-kinetic-package
sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-package

Running with python3

If you need to run with python3 while sourcing the devel space, you can use a virtual environment to make sure that the correct python version is used:

sudo apt-get install python3-venv
python3 -m venv ~/env --system-site-packages 
source ~/env/bin/activate

The line source ~/env/bin/activate can be added to your ~/.bashrc so it will automatically be done when opening a new terminal.

Bash commands

You can use a shortcuts for updating from the repositories, building the workspace, etc. These command are only available after you compiled successfully you catkin workspace and sourced the setup.bash. The available commands are:

  • rvmi u/update <rosinstall_file> - does git pull on all repositories using the specified rosinstall
  • rvmi l/launch <launch_file> - roslaunch from rvmi_launch/launch folder
  • rvmi L/LAUNCH <launch_file> - launch from rvmi_launch/launch folder using rosmon

Example of robot simulation launch

Type the following commands in 3 different terminals:

  • rvmi l core.launch
  • rvmi L robot.launch
  • rvmi L simulation.launch
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