FroboMind:Installation:Hydro

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This guide describes how to install FroboMind based on ROS Hydro and Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS. 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 current development of FroboMind is based on Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin). Click this link to download an installation CD image.

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/hydro/Installation/Ubuntu

Please notice that during the installation you will be prompted if you want to start hddtemp at boot. Just answer no to this question.

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. If you are new to the linux, notice that the shortcut to paste in the terminal is CTRL-SHIFT-V.

Run this command to install Python ROS support which is used in the decision making layer:

sudo apt-get install python-rosinstall

Run this command to install Bluetooth support which is used in fmCSP for serial communication via bluetooth:

sudo apt-get install libbluetooth-dev

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

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

Run this command to install some valuable Git utilities:

sudo apt-get install git-gui gitk 

4. Setting up Git

Git is installed on your computer as part of the ROS installation. 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"

5. Setting up GitHub

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. Login this this account.
  3. Follow this guide to set up SSH keys for establishing a secure connection between your computer and GitHub
  4. Go to https://github.com/FroboLab/FroboMind
  5. Click the Fork button at the upper right of your browser window.
  • When clicking the Fork button you create a copy of the FroboLab/FroboMind repository under your own account as YourUserName/FroboMind. This allows you to use GitHub for version control of your project and makes it much easier to keep the project synchronized between different computers.
  • If some of the content of FroboLab/FroboMind is updated, you will be able to retrieve these updates if and when you decide so. If you create new components that you wish to push back to FroboLab/FroboMind this is possible using Pull Requests at GitHub.
  • If you work in a team you might want to create an Organization at GitHub, add all team members to this organization and then fork FroboLab/FroboMind to YourOrganizationName/FroboMind.

6. Installing FroboMind

Run these commands to create a ROS workspace directory under your user home dir:

mkdir ~/roswork

Clone your YouUserName/FroboMind repository to the ROS workspace directory:

cd ~/roswork
git clone --recursive git@github.com:YouUserName/FroboMind.git src

Alternatively you can clone the current working repsitory of SDU (Be ware of beta software!)

git clone --recursive git@github.com:FroboMind-SDU/FroboMind.git src
Please notice that if you see this error when trying to clone the FroboMind repository:
Cloning into FroboMind...
Permission denied (publickey).
It means you forgot to set up SSH keys in section 5.

7. Compiling your first FroboMind application

ROS Groovy is compiled using catkin, however in FroboMind a script in the FroboMind src directory handles compilation of the components you need for a particular application, so you don't have to deal with catkin directly. Run these commands to compile and run the /fmApp/frobolab/frobit_v2_demo application:

cd ~/roswork/src
./frobomind_make /fmApp/frobolab/frobit_v2_demo

During the compilation process catkin has created two new directories, so now your roswork directory contains:

roswork/src
roswork/devel
roswork/build

To configure ROS for this workspace run:

source ~/roswork/devel/setup.bash
echo "source ~/roswork/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

The first line above configures your current shell, the second line configures all new shells that you open.

To be able to run the frobomind_make script from everywhere run:

echo 'PATH="$PATH:~/roswork/src"' >> ~/.bashrc

8. Where to go from here

When you have completed the installation above you are ready to begin using FroboMind. The FroboMind software is located in the directory:

~/roswork/src

This is where it gets really exiting. We recommend that you...