Installation Instructions

Robowflex is supported on many ROS platforms, from Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04 to Noetic on 20.04.

Here are some bare-bones installation instructions to get up and running on a new Ubuntu 18.04 machine without ROS already installed. This will only enable the core modules to be built, as some modules require special packages to be installed.

First, install ROS following the directions copied below:

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-melodic-desktop-full
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
sudo apt install python-rosinstall python-rosinstall-generator python-wstool build-essential

We recommend catkin-tools to build your ROS workspace:

sudo apt install python-catkin-tools

Install MoveIt:

sudo apt install ros-melodic-moveit

Finally, create a workspace with Robowflex inside:

cd ~
mkdir -p rb_ws/src
cd rb_ws
source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash # if you haven't already
catkin config --init
cd src
git clone https://github.com/KavrakiLab/robowflex.git
catkin build

To try out a demo script, you first need a robot description. The easiest to try is the Fetch robot, either by debian or source:

# Debian
sudo apt install ros-melodic-fetch-ros
 
# Or, Source
cd ~/rb_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/fetchrobotics/fetch_ros
catkin build

After the workspace is built, source and run a demo:

cd ~/rb_ws
source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun robowflex_library fetch_test