FroboMind:Installation:Electric

This guide describes how to install FroboMind based on ROS Electric and Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). If you want to install another version please visit the FroboMind installation page.

1. Installing Linux

The first step of installing FroboMind is to install Linux on your computer.

The following information is for PC systems only. If you want to install FroboMind on another platform please see Overo.

The current development of the FroboMind implementation in ROS is based on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). We recommend that you install this Linux distribution unless you know what you are doing.

You can find an ISO image for USB drive or CD installation at: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download

2. Installing ROS

The next step is to install ROS on top of your Linux installation.

ROS is an abbreviation for Robot Operating System which provides libraries and tools to help software developers create robot applications. It provides hardware abstraction, device drivers, libraries, visualizers, message-passing, package management, and more.

For information about how to install ROS on Ubuntu please go to this page: http://www.ros.org/wiki/electric/Installation/Ubuntu

3. Installing dependencies

Now you need to install packages and other software required by FroboMind. The commands listed here assumes that you are using Ubuntu or Debian.

Run this command to install git which is used clone the FroboMind repository to your computer:

sudo apt-get install git-core git-gui gitk

Run this command to install joystick drivers which are used for Wiimote control:

sudo apt-get install ros-electric-joystick-drivers

If the wiimote_node.py gives an error with system_time not found (error in cwiid) then do these steps (WORKAROUND!!).

sudo apt-get install libcwiid-dev 
cd "ROS_INSTALLATION"/stacks/joystick_drivers/cwiid/cwiid/lib/
sudo rm libcwiid.so libcwiid.so.1 libcwiid.so.1.0
ln -s /usr/lib/libcwiid.so libcwiid.so
ln -s /usr/lib/libcwiid.so.1 libcwiid.so.1
ln -s /usr/lib/libcwiid.so.1.0 libcwiid.so.1.0

The above commands makes the wiimote_node use the locally installed libcwiid instead of the one that comes with the joystick_drivers package.

Run these commands to install the SICK LMS lidar kernel module:

mkdir -p ~/ros/ros-deps
cd ~/ros/ros-deps 
git clone http://github.com/konradb3/libLMS1xx.git 
cd libLMS1xx
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr 
make 
sudo make install 
rm -rf ~/ros/ros-deps/libLMS1xx 

4. Setting up a GitHub account

The FroboMind software repository is located at http://github.com/FroboLab/FroboMind To install FroboMind you must therefore:

1. Create an account at GitHub
2. Follow this guide to set up SSH keys for establishing a secure connection between your computer and GitHub

If you are new to Git and GitHub you might want to look at our How to use Git and GitHub page.

5. Prepare your local repository

Create a ROS working directory:

mkdir ~/ros_work
cd ~/ros_work

You must include the directory in the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable. You can do this by running:

export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:~/ros_work

Or edit the file /opt/ros/electric/setup.sh

sudo nano /opt/ros/electric/setup.sh

You have to edit the export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH line in this file to look like this (replace user_name with you linux user name):

export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=/opt/ros/electric/stacks:/home/user_name/ros_work

You may want to run to following commands to verify that ROS finds our stack directory and that the stack name can be expanded into individual packages:

rospack profile
rosstack profile

Make sure your name and email address is registered correctly in the repository (replace using your own name and email address):

git config --global user.name "Firstname Lastname"
git config --global user.email "your_email@youremail.com"

6. Installing FroboMind

The rest of this guide assumes that you would like to install a copy of FroboMind on your computer for your own use only. If you wish to use Git and GitHub for version control among a group of developers (or robots) or you would like to contribute software back to the FroboMind repository, you must switch to the FroboMind contribution repository guide at this point. If you are new to Git and GitHub you might want to look at our How to use Git and GitHub page.

If you have read the above paragraph and want to continue with this guide, go to your ROS working directory:

cd ~/ros_work

Create your own FroboMind repository by cloning the FroboMind repository at GitHub:

git clone git@github.com:FroboLab/FroboMind.git

Enter the directory of your FroboMind repository:

roscd FroboMind

Run this command to build FroboMind. Please verify that ROS expands FroboMind into individual packages:

rosmake FroboMind

7. Updating FroboMind

If you after the installation of FroboMind would like to update your version with all changes made at the FroboMind repository at GitHub please run the following commands.

Go to the FroboMind repository directory:

roscd FroboMind

Fetch updates from the FroboMind repository at GitHub:

git fetch

git rebase origin/master

You can visualize and browse the version history by running:

gitk

Typical problems

If you see this error when trying to clone the FroboMind repository:

$ git clone git@github.com:FroboLab/FroboMind.git
Cloning into FroboMind...
Permission denied (publickey).

It means you need to Follow this guide to set up SSH keys before successfully cloning the repository.