Installing the Research SDK

Prerequisites

• A developer workstation meeting the minimum system requirements is available for use.
• The developer workstation has been set up successfully with Ubuntu and ROS - instructions here.
• You have configured your Development Workstation to access Github. Instructions here.

Outcome of this step

• You have installed the Rethink RSDK on the Development Workstation.

Installing the Research SDK

1. Download the dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install python-wstool python-rosdep

2. Create a new catkin_ws.

$ mkdir ~/ros_ws
$ cd ~/ros_ws

3. Copy in the attached rosinstall file to this root of your catkin ws.

4. Create source dir

$ mkdir src

5. Run wstool to pull down the source repos into your src directory

$ wstool init -j8 src baxter_sdk.rosinstall

6. As you can see this pulls down the development branches from all of our repositories into your source directory :)

7. Source ros setup if you haven't yet

$ source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash

8. Build

$ catkin_make
$ catkin_make install

9. Use our handy script for env setup

$ cp src/baxter/baxter.sh .

10. Edit ros_hostname and ros_ip in this file, running after

$ ./baxter.sh

#OLD STUFF, WILL BE DELETED AFTER TESTING ABOVE PROCEDURE

1. Install Dependencies

• Open a Terminal and install the following 3rd-party dependencies

  $ sudo apt-get install ros-electric-control ros-electric-joystick-drivers ros-electric-geometry
  $ sudo apt-get install python-argparse

2. Checkout RSDK Code

• In your Terminal window, create a directory for git in a location of your choice, then cd to that directory.

  $ mkdir git
  $ cd git

• Clone the new repo:

  $ git clone [email protected]:RethinkRobotics/sdk-examples.git

• Go to the sdk-examples subdirectory created by the clone

  $ cd sdk-examples

• Make sure you have the proper tag which is currently v0.6.1

  $ git tag -l
  
  $ git checkout v0.6.1

3. Initialize the RSDK Environment & Build

• Run the init.sh script and provide the robot's hostname as an argument. Optionally, provide the ROS distribution you wish to use (defaults to latest deb installed version).

  $ ./init.sh <Baxter Hostname> [ROS Distro]

• Go to the baxter subdirectory

  $ cd baxter

• Build the examples

  $ rosmake baxter --pre-clean

• Note: if the development workstation hostname is not resolvable to an IP address from the robot, then you will have to set the ROS_IP environment variable. Our example uses 192.168.1.100 but please substitute your IP address for your development workstation. Use 'ifconfig' to get this IP address.

  $ export ROS_IP=192.168.1.100

Next Steps

Baxter Research Robot Hardware Installation Guide