RoboRacing Software Installation Instructions

Welcome!

Robojackets RoboRacing currently supports an Ubuntu 20.04 and ROS-noetic environment. The project may build/run in other environments, but we can't guarantee it.

Let's begin the installation process.

Install ROS Noetic

Step 1 - ROS Installation

We will be using the instructions found on the ROS Noetic Ubuntu Guide

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver 'hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80' --recv-key C1CF6E31E6BADE8868B172B4F42ED6FBAB17C654
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-noetic-desktop-full --yes

Step 2 - Environment Variable Setup

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

Step 3 - Get Terminator

We primarily use terminator instead of the default terminal since it allows for both horizontal and vertical splitting (which obviously increases overall productivity). Start up the default terminal and type:

sudo apt install terminator

Setup Workspace

Step 4 - Make File Structure

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/RoboJackets/roboracing-software.git --recursive

Step 5 - Install Dependencies

cd ~/catkin_ws
sudo apt install python3-rosdep python-is-python3 python3-catkin-tools --yes
rosdep install --from-path src --ignore-src -y -r

• rosdep will download and install all of the necessary ros package dependencies
• -r option is there to ensure that one package failure will not prevent all other packages from being installed

Step 6 - Building the Code

catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

You can run:

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

to ensure you don't have to source this setup.bash after every compilation.

If you see an error:

 CMake Error at /opt/ros/noetic/share/catkin/cmake/empy.cmake:30 (message):
 Unable to find either executable 'empy' or Python module 'em'...  try
 installing the package 'python3-empy'

Run this instead

catkin_make -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python3
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

Sometimes the python location is not accurate, causing a cmake to fail. This option also works if you are using catkin build.

Step 7 - Dependencies Problems

For some computers, some of our packages aren't getting installed with rosdep install so just install them manually if you have issues with them:

sudo apt install ros-noetic-costmap-2d ros-noetic-effort-controllers ros-noetic-robot-localization

Ensure that your pyyaml is set to the proper version

pip install pyyaml==5.1.2

Run the Code

roscore &

• Then press [Enter]

For IARRC Simulation

• In one terminal run:

roslaunch rr_gazebo macaroni_iarrc_circuit.launch

• In another terminal run:

roslaunch rr_iarrc test_circuit_sim.launch

For EVGP Simulation

• In one terminal run:

roslaunch rr_gazebo evgp.launch

• In another terminal run:

roslaunch rr_evgp evgp_planning_demo.launch

• Remeber to do source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash if the launch file can't be found in package (you should add this to ~/.bashrc if you haven't already)
• Gazebo sometimes freezes when loading right after installation so just run it, wait, kill it with [Ctrl-C], wait until it is dead, then retry!