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NASA_INSTALL.md

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Usage instructions for NASA users

Install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 16.04 on a host machine, and make sure that you can checkout and build code. If you are using a virtual machine, please use VMware. Virtualbox doesn't support some of our Gazebo plugins.

sudo apt-get install build-essential git

Note: Please ensure you install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. We do not support running Astrobee Robot Software on 32-bit systems.

Machine setup

General notes before running the scripts below

  • The custom debian packages are currently stored on the "volar" server. So you need to have credentials on volar to run these scripts.
  • If you are using a VM with a username that does not match your NDC username, you have two options:
    • Set correctly the environment variable NDC_USERNAME
    • Or set a ssh config that specify the right username for volar.
  • If you are outside the NASA ARC private network, you need to:
  • These notes apply to add_local_repository.sh and make_xenial.sh

Checkout the project source code

At this point you need to decide where you'd like to put the source code (SOURCE_PATH) on your machine:

export SOURCE_PATH=$HOME/freeflyer

First, clone the flight software repository:

git clone --recursive https://[email protected]/git/freeflyer \
    --branch develop $SOURCE_PATH

Dependencies

Next, install all required dependencies:

pushd $SOURCE_PATH
cd scripts/platform/desktop
./add_local_repository.sh
./add_ros_repository.sh
./install_desktop_16_04_packages.sh
popd

Extra options to install the dependencies

  • If you do not want to configure you .ssh/config to just get the dependencies, you can use the NDC_USERNAME variable.
  • By default, the custom debians are installed in $SOURCE_PATH/.astrobee_deb. If you prefer to install them at a different location, you can use the ARS_DEB_DIR variable.
export NDC_USERNAME=jdoe
export ARS_DEB_DIR=$HOME/freeflyer_debs
./add_local_repository.sh

Cross-compile setup

If you are planning to compile code to run on the robot hardware, you will need to install a cross-compile chroot and toolchain. Select two directories for these:

export ARMHF_CHROOT_DIR=$HOME/arm_cross/rootfs
export ARMHF_TOOLCHAIN=$HOME/arm_cross/toolchain/gcc

Append these lines to your .bashrc file, as you will need these two variables every time you cross compile.

Next, download the cross toolchain and install the chroot:

mkdir -p $ARMHF_TOOLCHAIN
cd $HOME/arm_cross
$SOURCE_PATH/scripts/platform/fetch_toolchain.sh
$SOURCE_PATH/scripts/platform/rootfs/make_xenial.sh dev $ARMHF_CHROOT_DIR

Configuring the build

At this point you need to decide whether you'd like to compile natively [native] (run code against a simulator) or for an ARM target [armhf] (run the code on the robot itself). Please skip to the relevant subsection.

Note for both builds setup

By default, the configure script uses the following paths:

  • native build path: $HOME/freeflyer_build/native
  • native install path: $HOME/freeflyer_install/native
  • armhf build path: $HOME/freeflyer_build/armhf
  • armhf install path: $HOME/freeflyer_install/armhf

If you are satisfied with these paths, you can invoke the configure.sh without the -p and -b options. For the simplicity of the instructions below, we assume that $BUILD_PATH and $INSTALL_PATH contain the location of the build and install path for either native or armhf platforms.

Native build

The configure script prepares your build directory for compiling the code. Note that configure.sh is simply a wrapper around CMake that provides an easy way of turning on and off options. To see which options are supported, simply run configure.sh -h.

pushd $SOURCE_PATH
./scripts/configure.sh -l
popd

If you want to explicitly specify the build and install directories, use instead:

./scripts/configure.sh -l -p $INSTALL_PATH -b $BUILD_PATH

Cross-compile build

Cross compiling for the robot follows the same process, except the configure script takes a -a flag instead of -l.

pushd $SOURCE_PATH
./scripts/configure.sh -a
popd

Or with explicit build and install paths:

./scripts/configure.sh -a -p $INSTALL_PATH -b $BUILD_PATH

Warning: $INSTALL_PATH and $BUILD_PATH used for cross compiling HAVE to be different than the paths for native build!

Building the code

To build, run make in the $BUILD_PATH. Note that depending on your host machine, this might take in the order of tens of minutes to complete the first time round. Future builds will be faster, as only changes to the code are rebuilt, and not the entire code base.

pushd $BUILD_PATH
make -j6
popd

Note: $BUILD_PATH above is either the path for native build or armhf build, whatever you currently are doing.

Running a simulation

In order to run a simulation you must have build natively. You will need to first setup your environment, so that ROS knows about the new packages provided by Astrobee flight software:

pushd $BUILD_PATH
source devel/setup.bash
popd

After this command has completed, you should be able to run a simulator from any directory in your Linux filesystem. So, for example, to start a simulation of a single Astrobee in the Granite Lab, run the following:

roslaunch astrobee simulator.launch

This command tells ROS to look for the simulation.launch file provided by the astrobee package, and use roslaunch to run it. Internally, ROS maintains a cache of information about package locations, libraries and executables. If you find that the above command doesn't work, try rebuilding the cache:

rospack profile

Running the code on a real robot

In order to do this, you will need to have followed the cross-compile build instructions. Once the code has been built, you also need to install the code to a singular location. CMake remembers what $INSTALL_PATH you specified, and will copy all products into this directory.

pushd $BUILD_PATH
make install
popd

Once the installation has completed, copy the install directory to the robot. This script assumes that you are connected to the Astrobee network, as it uses rsync to copy the install directory to ~/armhf on the two processors.

pushd $SOURCE_PATH
./scripts/install_to_astrobee.sh $INSTALL_PATH
popd

You are now ready to run the code. This code launches a visualization tool, which starts the flight software as a background process.

pushd $SOURCE_PATH
python ./tools/gnc_visualizer/scripts/visualizer --proto4
popd

Further information

Please refer to the wiki.