Setting Up a Development Environment

Rover 2.0 runs on the open source Robotic Operating System, specifically the latest LTS version dubbed Melodic Morena. Which can be installed on Linux (ideally Ubuntu), Windows, or Mac (through Homebrew).

Installing Ubuntu

Install Ubuntu, preferably version 18.04 Bionic Beaver.

If you're unfamiliar with Linux or the command line, we recommend running through our Bash Crash Course at some point.

Installing ROS

Once you have a working Linux distro, you can install a version of ROS. We currently target Melodic.

• ROS Melodic Install Page

Follow the instructions for your current OS. Once installed, consider checking out our ROS Crash Course.

Condas and Jupyter Notebooks/Lab

The Jupyter Project provides tools to run interactive notebooks for interpreted languages, such as Python. To get started, follows these steps:

1. Install Miniconda
2. Next, follow the JupyterLab install instructions for conda
3. Then, follow the instructions to install the ROS Jupyter extension, specifically for JupyterLab

Editors

We highly recommend installing Visual Studio Code or Atom to use as your primary code editor. Both are highly customizable and extensible, and have extensions available for ROS.