Installation of the robotic tools¶
The robotic tools should be installed on any system that hosts components of the software architecture for the Robotic platform. This section details the installation process.
Note
For all the guidelines gathered here, we will assume that you are using Ubuntu GNU/Linux as it is the supported distribution for ROS (though any other UNIX platform should be suited to the GenoM3 tools). Many commands given here are intended for the bash shell. If you use a different shell, you should adapt the bash-related commands accordingly.
Install ROS¶
The ROS distribution you can install will depend on your Ubuntu version:
- If you have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS or 13.10, follow the ROS Indigo installation instructions.
- Otherwise, follow the ROS Hydro installation instructions.
Install the GenoM3 tools through robotpkg¶
This section will guide you through the installation of the GenoM3 tools. GenoM3 is open-source software (available at https://git.openrobots.org/) and can be compiled from source, but the common installation uses robotpkg, a compilation framework and packaging system for robotics software (more information at http://robotpkg.openrobots.org/).
Get robotpkg on your system¶
Note
The following instructions invite you to download two git repositories. If
the given URLs using git://
protocol fail, try https://
protocol as
instructed here and there.
If you need an introduction to git have a look at
Git for beginners.
First, get the robotpkg
repository in your home folder (you can choose
another location, but we recommend this one):
cd
git clone git://git.openrobots.org/robots/robotpkg
You will also need the wip subset of robotpkg, it contains some work in progress that is not officially released, but already available:
cd ~/robotpkg
git clone git://git.openrobots.org/robots/robotpkg/robotpkg-wip wip
Next, set the installation path. The tools that you will soon install will be
placed in your home folder under a dedicated folder named
openrobots
. Installing robotic components in your home folder ensures that
you do not need root privileges for the installation (you can choose another
location with a different prefix, but we recommend this one):
cd ~/robotpkg/bootstrap
./bootstrap --prefix $HOME/openrobots
To finish, update your environment variables to include the installation folder:
Note
In the following commands, note the use of an environment variable
ROBOTPKG_BASE
to indicate your installation path, set to
$HOME/openrobots
. If you have selected a different location at the
previous step, you should modify the corresponding command accordingly.
echo >> ~/.bashrc
echo '# ROBOTPKG' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export ROBOTPKG_BASE=$HOME/openrobots' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$ROBOTPKG_BASE/bin:$ROBOTPKG_BASE/sbin' \
>> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$PKG_CONFIG_PATH:\
$ROBOTPKG_BASE/lib/pkgconfig' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:\
$ROBOTPKG_BASE/src/ros-nodes:$ROBOTPKG_BASE/share' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:\
$ROBOTPKG_BASE/lib/python2.7/site-packages:\
$ROBOTPKG_BASE/lib/python3.2/site-packages' >> ~/.bashrc
echo '# ROBOTPKG END' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
How to install a robotpkg package¶
Your ~/robotpkg
directory contains a tree of packages, grouped into main
categories. In the next part, we will invite you to install some of those
packages. Here, we expose you the guidelines to follow for each package.
Add options to the package
If you are asked to add options
option-1 option-2 ...
to the packagepkg-name
, edit the file~/openrobots/etc/robotpkg.conf
and add a line (near the beginning for instance) looking like:PKG_OPTIONS.pkg-name+= option-1 option-2 ...
You will get a better idea about this step with an actual example in the next part.
Move to the package’s directory
You will be given the path to the package, such as
robotpkg/category/pkg-name
. Change to this directory:cd ~/robotpkg/category/pkg-name
Install possibly missing system dependencies
Run the following command to list the dependencies for the package you are about to install:
make show-depends
At the end of the command’s output, the dependencies are separated into
Robotpkg dependencies
andSystem dependencies
. If any robotpkg dependency is missing, it will be automatically installed. If any system dependency is missing, you need to install it (commonly with apt-get under Ubuntu). Iterate this step until no system dependency is missing.You may skip this step, but if a system dependency is missing, the package installation will stop at some point and you will be asked to install it.
Install the package
Run the following command:
make update
This will download the sources, compile them locally on your system, and install the output files in the
~/openrobots
directory.
Install packages for GenoM3¶
Install the package
demo-genom3
fromrobotpkg/doc/demo-genom3
with optionscodels ros-server ros-client-ros ros-client-c
.This package will install the demo component. It is a sample component distributed with GenoM3, serving as an example, simply controlling the motion of a fictional robot. The aim of installing the demo component is twofold: first, it automatically installs all the dependencies for using GenoM3 (the provided options specifying that we will use the ROS templates); second, you get a GenoM3 component ready to be run to start using the robotic tools.
For your convenience, here is how applying the above steps could look like:
# 1. Add options to the package echo 'PKG_OPTIONS.demo-genom3+= codels ros-server ros-client-ros ros-client-c'\ >> ~/openrobots/etc/robotpkg.conf # or better, edit the file manually and add the line near the beginning # 2. Change to the package's directory cd ~/robotpkg/doc/demo-genom3 # 3. Install missing system dependencies make show-depends # Let's say that `make show-depends` revealed two missing system # dependencies named 'bison' and 'flex'. Next step would be: sudo apt-get install bison flex make show-depends # No missing system dependency left # 4. Install the package make update
Then, install the packages
genomix
fromrobotpkg/net/genomix
androsix
fromrobotpkg/net/rosix
.genomix and rosix are HTTP servers providing an interface for some clients to control GenoM3 components and generic ROS nodes respectively.
Then, install the packages
tcl-genomix
fromrobotpkg/supervision/tcl-genomix
andmatlab-genomix
fromrobotpkg/supervision/matlab-genomix
.These are clients of genomix and rosix servers. The tcl-genomix client allows to control components using the Tcl language. Its installation is not mandatory (we will rather use the matlab-genomix client), but recommended as a common package distributed with GenoM3. The matlab-genomix client allows to control components from Matlab.
Note
You need a Matlab installation on your system in order to install the
matlab-genomix
package. If you encounter a missing dependency formex
(the MEX compiler from Matlab), you need to add the path to Matlab executables to thePATH
environment variable. For example, with Matlab R2013a installed in/usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a
, it would be done with:export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/MATLAB/R2013a/bin
The GenoM3 tools are now installed on your system. If you want to try the Matlab bridge, you can follow the official tutorial using the demo component. You can also follow the instructions below to install BASS, an audio streaming server component and later on follow the tutorial Stream binaural signals from BASS to Matlab.
Note
The Matlab bridge is installed in ~/openrobots/lib/matlab
. To follow the
tutorials using matlab-genomix, you need to add this path to the Matlab
path.
Install a GenoM3 component from the sources¶
Instructions¶
The software part of the Two!Ears robotic architecture includes several
GenoM3 components. You may have to install them from their source files. Each
GenoM3 component has its own folder, containing a description file named after
the component with the .gen
extension (something like
component.gen
). These steps will install the component in your
~/openrobots
folder:
cd path/to/component/folder
genom3 skeleton -i component.gen
./bootstrap.sh
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --prefix=$ROBOTPKG_BASE --with-templates=ros/server,ros/client/c
make install
Example: installing the BASS component¶
BASS is a component for binaural audio streaming. The folder
for this component is named bass-genom3
, under the RoboticPlateform
folder of the software repository (see the installation guide).
Applying the above commands to install BASS gives:
# assuming that you are in the software repository
cd RoboticPlateform/bass-genom3
genom3 skeleton -i bass.gen
./bootstrap.sh
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --prefix=$ROBOTPKG_BASE --with-templates=ros/server,ros/client/c
make install
Note
You might need additional ALSA libraries, like libasound-dev
or libasound2-dev
,
to install the BASS component (commonly with apt-get
under Ubuntu).