Start ROS

roscore

Get the starter code

Generate SSH keys

Generate a new SSH key pair if you don't already have one. A blank password is fine:

ssh-keygen

Set up SSH keys on Github

Go to your Github SSH keys settings and paste the contents of your ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub into a new SSH key:

gedit ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Create a workspace

We recommend using Catkin tools, which is a replacement for catkin_make from the ROS tutorials. Catkin tools is already installed on the course computers.

This code will migrate your existing Catkin workspace to use Catkin tools:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin init
catkin clean -bdy
catkin build

Download the course starter code

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/robotic-picker-sp22/fetch-picker.git
cd fetch-picker
git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/mikeferguson/simple_grasping.git 
git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 https://github.com/fetchrobotics/fetch_gazebo.git
cd ~/catkin_ws/src/fetch-picker/fetch_gazebo
git checkout gazebo11
sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-grasping-msgs

Build your workspace:

catkin build

The build should complete successfully with this message, which appears whenever you build a new package for the first time:

[build] Note: Workspace packages have changed, please re-source setup files to use them.

This means that all of your current terminal windows will not be aware of this package (and the package name cannot be tab-completed). The .bashrc files on the course computers are configured to re-source setup files, so you can just source your .bashrc:

cd ~/catkin_ws
source devel/setup.bash

Test that the package built successfully by running:

rosrun applications hello_world.py

You should see:

/hello_world main:8: Hello world!

Start the simulator

Fetch

roslaunch fetch_gazebo playground.launch

The very first time you run the simulator on a new computer, it will take some time to start up. If it doesn't appear to work after a minute or so, shut down the simulator with Ctrl-C and restart it. It may take several tries.

You should see the following:

Save the starter code to your team's repository

You should have received an invitation to join the Robotic Picker Project Github organization: https://github.com/robotic-picker-sp22. Create a public repository called teamNUMBER. Change teamNUMBER to team1, team2, etc.

You should keep your code and data backed up to the cloud, since our course computers have had some issues in the past. Your team will back up your code to Github as part of the Robotic Picker Project Github organization.

To do this, first change the url of the origin remote. Change teamNUMBER to team1, team2, etc.:

git remote set-url origin [email protected]:robotic-picker-sp22/teamNUMBER.git
git push -u origin noetic-devel

Do this now. Verify that your code has been pushed by visiting https://github.com/robotic-picker-sp22/teamNUMBER. If you do not see your code, switch to the noetic-devel branch. If possible, change default branch from master to noetic-devel and delete the master branch.