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RCARS / Installation

RCARS Installation Instructions

The following guide provides you with a step-by-step tutorial on how to install RCARS.

Basic Software Dependencies

RCARS depends on a few external software frameworks and libraries that you will have to install to run and build RCARS.

ROS

RCARS is implemented using ROS (Robot Operating System. So far, the software has been tested under Ubuntu 14.04 LTS using ROS Indigo. However, it should work on other Ubuntu and catkin-based ROS versions as well. To install ROS, please follow the instructions on ros.org.

Catkin Build Tools

While not formally required, we recommend using Catkin Build Tools as a more convenient way to build your catkin workspace. You can install these tools via

sudo apt-get install python-catkin-tools

Eigen

For most linear algebra computations, we use Eigen. Eigen is a linear algebra library for C++. On Ubuntu, you can install Eigen from the console by executing

sudo apt-get install libeigen3-dev

Main Installation

Setting up Catkin workspace

In order to build and run RCARS you need a catkin workspace. Follow this guide to set up a clean workspace.

Install ROS dependencies

RCARS depends on a few other ROS / catkin packages.

Kindr

RCARS depends on v0.0.1 of Kindr, a kinematics and robotics library for robotics. Kinder is mostly used for transformations and conversions between different representations of orientations.

To install kindr v0.0.1, simply clone the repository in your "src" folder in your catkin ws:

git clone https://github.com/ethz-asl/kindr

then cd to the folder and checkout version 0.0.1

cd kindr
git checkout 0.0.1

Kindr will be build automatically when you build your catkin workspace later.

Leightweight-Filtering

RCARS also depends on version v0.1 of Lightweight-Filtering, an EKF filter package. Also Leightweight-Filtering only needs to be cloned into your "src" directory of your workspace and you have to select the correct git tag (v0.1). On newer git versions, this can be achieved using the following command

git clone --branch v0.1 https://bitbucket.org/bloesch/lightweight_filtering.git

If this does not work on your git, you have to first clone the repository

git clone https://bitbucket.org/bloesch/lightweight_filtering.git

and then switch to the git tag "v0.1".

git checkout v0.1

Install RCARS

To install RCARS, simply clone the repository to the "src" directory of your catkin worksapace

git clone git@bitbucket.org:adrlab/rcars.git

Build Workspace

To finalize the installation, you have to build your workspace. To do so, you can use catkin build (or catkin_make).

catkin build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE

Important note: Since RCARS involves image processing and advanced linear algebra, it is important that you compile in Release mode which is enabled by the "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE" flag. Building in Debug mode will result in poor performance and should only be used for debugging.

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