Armer Installation¶

Requirements¶

Robot Specific Requirements¶

ROS drivers with joint group velocity controllers (ros_control)
Robotics Toolbox model or URDF (loaded as a robot_description parameter)

Quickstart Installation (Native Linux)¶

Copy and paste the following code snippet into a terminal to create a new catkin workspace and install the Armer drivers to it. Note this script will also add the workspace to be sourced every time a bash terminal is opened.

# Install pip
sudo apt install python3-pip

# Make the workspace and clone armer and armer_msgs packages
mkdir -p ~/armer_ws/src && cd ~/armer_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/qcr/armer.git && git clone https://github.com/qcr/armer_msgs

# Install all required packages
pip install -r ~/armer_ws/src/armer/requirements.txt
cd .. && rosdep init && rosdep update && rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

# Make and source the workspace
catkin_make
echo "source ~/armer_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/armer_ws/devel/setup.bash
echo "Installation complete!"

Note

If the rosdep command is failing to find dependencies, make sure the QCR Robotic Vision repos have been added. See Adding QCR Robotic Vision Repos

RoboStack Installation (Linux, Mac, Windows)¶

To enable easy use of ROS on these operating systems, it is recommended to use RoboStack; note that ROS 1 (noetic) is recommended at this stage. Please ensure you have mamba installed before proceeding. Please follow all required steps for the RoboStack install (as per their instructions) to enable the smoothest setup on your particular OS.

Note

This is still in progress. See here for updates.

# --- Mamba Environment Setup --- #
# Create and activate a new robostack (ros-env) environment
mamba create -n ros-env ros-noetic-desktop python=3.9 -c robostack-staging -c conda-forge --no-channel-priority --override-channels
mamba activate ros-env

# Install some compiler packages
mamba install compilers cmake pkg-config make ninja

# FOR WINDOWS: Install the Visual Studio command prompt - if you use Visual Studio 2022
mamba install vs2022_win-64

# --- ARMer Setup --- #
# Make the armer workspace and clone in armer and armer_msgs packages
# FOR LINUX/MACOS
mkdir -p ~/armer_ws/src && cd ~/armer_ws/src
# FOR WINDOWS: Assumes you are in the home folder
mkdir armer_ws\src && cd armer_ws\src
# Clone in armer and armer_msgs
git clone https://github.com/qcr/armer.git && git clone https://github.com/qcr/armer_msgs
# Install all required packages (into ros-env) - from current directory
# FOR LINUX/MACOS
pip install -r armer/requirements.txt
# FOR WINDOWS
pip install -r armer\requirements.txt
# Enter armer_ws folder and run rosdep commands
cd .. && rosdep init && rosdep update && rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

# Make and source the workspace (including environment)
catkin_make

# --- Default Activation of Environment --- #
# FOR LINUX
echo "mamba activate ros-env" >> ~/.bashrc

# FOR MACOS
echo "mamba activate ros-env" >> ~/.bash_profile

# --- Workspace Source --- #
source ~/armer_ws/devel/setup.bash

If the script has completed with no errors, continue on to Supported Arms.