Pre-requisite Software

_images/ros_noetic.png

The ROS driver for the VRTK2 is supported for the ROS Noetic as well as ROS2.

PC Setup

ROS Noetic installation requires Ubutnu 20.04.

  1. Download Ubuntu 20.04

  2. Follow the Ubuntu 20.04 Installation guide

ROS-noetic Installation

You may run the following commands to install ROS noetic or you can simply follow the instructions from the roswiki.

  1. Enter the Ubuntu terminal and typie in the following command:

cd

  1. The next step is setting up the source list:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

  1. After which you will set up the keys:

sudo apt install curl
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc | sudo apt-key add -

  1. Then, you will install ROS-noetic:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-noetic-desktop-full

  1. Finally, you will add ROS environment to your bash file, what this means is that each time you load up your terminal, it will automatically find the built-in ROS packages.

echo "source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

  1. Install python dependencies and initialize repo:

sudo apt install python3-rosdep python3-rosinstall python3-rosinstall-generator python3-wstool build-essential
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Once the ROS packages are set-up the next step would be to set up a workspace in which you can add pre-built packages to control your robot.

Catkin Workspace

  1. The first step is to ensure that you have correctly setup you ROS noetic. It can be checked by:

cd ..
source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

  1. Next, install catkin_tools:

sudo apt install python3-catkin-tools

  1. The next step is to create, your workspace. This is typically created in the home directory following the standard ROS convention, once built, you should see a build and devel folder next to your src folder:

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/
catkin build

  1. To enable the workspace, you must type in:

source devel/setup.bash

  1. To avoid typing this everytime you start a terminal, you’ll add this into the last line of the bashrc file:

gedit ~/.bashrc

  • Add the following line at the end of the bashrc file:

source /home/<your_computer_username>/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

  • Everytime you do a catkin build, it is necessary to either restart all your terminals, or source them.

  • To verify that everything is working correctly, type the following into the terminal:

echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH