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Home Robot ROS Package

We use a multi-system setup for controlling the Hello Stretch, where low-level control runs on the "Robot" and large neural nets are evaluated on a "Workstation" -- which here refers to a local computer with a GPU.

On the Robot, we install home_robot_hw directly into the native environment (without conda) as a ROS package.

Installation for Hello Robot Stretch

The following instructions assume a functional Hello Stretch Robot that has already been set up. This means that you should be able to run stretch_robot_system_check.py and that the results are all green.

For instructions on how to set up the hardware, see the official documentation here: https://docs.hello-robot.com/0.2/

Installing the Home Robot stack on the robot

# Make sure ROS can find python properly
sudo apt install python-is-python3 pybind11-dev

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/facebookresearch/home-robot
HOME_ROBOT_ROOT=$(realpath home-robot)

# Install requirements
cd $HOME_ROBOT_ROOT/src/home_robot
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Install the core home_robot package
pip install -e .

# Install SLAM dependency on the robot
sudo apt install ros-noetic-hector-slam 

# Create a catkin workspace  - this will contain your code
# It may already exist. If so, skip this step
cd $HOME
mkdir -p catkin_ws/src
cd catkin_ws
catkin_init_workspace

# Stretch ROS library
cd $HOME/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/hello-robot/stretch_ros.git --branch noetic

# Set up the python package for ROS
ln -s $HOME_ROBOT_ROOT/src/home_robot_hw $HOME/catkin_ws/src/home_robot_hw

# Rebuild ROS to make sure paths are correct
cd $HOME/catkin_ws
catkin_make

We recommend you add this to your robot's ~/.bashrc or equivalent:

source $HOME/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

If using the zsh shell there is an equivalent:

source $HOME/catkin_ws/devel/setup.zsh

These will ensure you can run the ROS-side launch files easily, and focus development on the server side.

Setting up ROS Network

We recommend adding this to your ~/.bashrc file on the Robot:

# Whatever your robot's IP address is
export HELLO_ROBOT_IP=10.0.0.6

export ROS_IP=$HELLO_ROBOT_IP
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://$HELLO_ROBOT_IP:11311

# Optionally - make it clear to avoid issues
echo "Setting ROS_MASTER_URI to $ROS_MASTER_URI"
echo "Setting ROS IP to $ROS_IP"

Setting the IP addresses explicitly will help reduce some potential errors with ROS multi-node communication.

Debugging ROS network issues

Make sure you can do this on both your Workstation and on the Robot itself:

On the server:

rostopic pub /test std_msgs/String "data: 'test'"  -r 10  -v

On the robot:

rostopic echo /test

And then try the reverse (run server command on robot and vice versa).

If you do not see the word "test" appearing when you run the rostopic echo command, then one of your machines cannot see the other! Either you did not configure the network properly (see above) or your network administrator is blocking the connection. One thing you can try is manually configuring your IPv4 connection and putting both machines on the same subnet (e.g. 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2).