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 and Install the dependencies

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

2. Create a new catkin_ws.

$ mkdir -p ~/ros_ws/src
$ cd ~/ros_ws/src

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

$ wstool init .
$ wstool merge https://raw.github.com/RethinkRobotics/baxter/release-0.7.0/baxter_sdk.rosinstall
$ wstool update
$ cd ..
$ rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro groovy -y
$ catkin_make

This pulls down the development branches from all of our repositories into your source directory.

4. Source ros setup if you haven't yet

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

5. Build and Install

$ catkin_make
$ catkin_make install

6. Use the baxter.sh script for proper environment setup

$ cp src/baxter/baxter.sh .

7. Edit baxter_hostname and your_ip variables in this script file, and then run:

$ ./baxter.sh

#Things to check or verify

• Make sure you have the proper tag which is currently v0.7.0

  $ git tag -l
  
  $ git checkout v0.7.0

• **Note: if the development workstation hostname is not resolvable to an IP address from the robot, then you will have to ensure the ROS_IP environment variable is set. Use the 'env' command to see what environment variables were set as a result of the running the baxter.sh script above and ensure that ROS_IP and/or ROS_HOSTNAME are set properly.

  $ env

Use 'ifconfig' to get your development workstation's IP address.**

Next Steps

Baxter Research Robot Hardware Installation Guide