The Future of Robot Rescue Simulation - Installation Requirements

Computation Hardware

The workshop has several tutorials and hands-on assignments, which require simulation and programming environments. In principal we expect that everybody has a laptop to work on. The Lorentz Center will provide guest-access to the internet, although EduRoam users can directly use their EduRoam account.

In addition, we will provide a GameServer and there will be a tutorial by The Construct Sim how simulation could be performed in the cloud.

Still, it is beneficial to have a Linux laptop prepared for the workshop. This are the instructions to prepare the robot. The tutorials during the workshop will build on this environment.

An alternative is to run the environment in a Virtual Machine. When time allows, we will prepare such Virtual Machine. Yet, previous experiences with running so demanding simulation and visualization software in a Virtual Machine not positive, so for the moment we would recommend to run the software native.

Installation Instructions

What is needed to be prepared for the workshop, is Linux laptop with Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS (Trusty 64bits), with ROS Indigo and Gazebo5. These are the instructions to get to such installation:

Follow the instructions to install Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS.
- If your version of Ubuntu is older (i.e. 12.04 LTS), you could upgrade with the command do-release-upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade (all these installation commands are executed as super-user by adding sudo command in front).
- If upgrading fails, search for held installations with the command dpkg --get-selections | grep hold, followed by apt-get remove PACKAGE, apt-get update and apt-get autoremove.
- If upgrading still fails, search for broken installations with the command grep Broken /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log, followed by apt-get remove PACKAGE and apt-get autoremove.
Once you have Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS, install to install ROS Indigo:
- sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
- sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key 0xB01FA116
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-desktop
  - If this installation fails due to conflicts between dependencies of packages which are no longer installed but whose dependency remained after the Ubuntu upgrade, remove the old dependency with the command dpgk -r PACKAGE.
Continue with the installation of the latest production version of Gazebo (gazebo5 is part of ROS Jade):
- sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
- wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-gazebo5-ros-pkgs

Alternative installations

The packages used during this workshop have complex dependencies. It is well possible that you don't have to downgrade from ROS Gravy or upgrade from Gazebo5 and still be succesfull in the workshop. Actually, such alternative installation could give usefull information on the sensitivities and dependencies of the packages, so please record your experience. Yet, our experience is that the least time is wasted when you upgrade/downgrade to the versions which are recommended here.

Workshop Program

Tutorial Preparation

Masaru Shimizu, Chukyo University, Aichi, Japan
Lauren Tabolinsky & Arie Weeren - MathWorks
Nate Koenig - Open Source Robotics Foundation
Satoshi Kochiyama - New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, Japan
Stefan Kohlbrecher - TU Darmstad, Germany
Ricardo Tellez - The Construct Sim
Arnoud Visser, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands