Workstation Setup (Start Here)

#Introduction

Following this guide will help you set up your workstation in order to interact with Baxter Zoidbot. Zoidbot should already be set up and ready to connect to and is currently running ROS Indigo. If this is not the case please follow this guide (coming soon) to set up Baxter.

#Prerequisites Your workstation, here after referred to as PC, should be running Ubunutu 14.04 and have ROS Indigo installed. Please follow these instructions to install ROS.

#Workstation Setup

##Creating a Baxter Development Workspace

$ mkdir -p ~/baxter_ws/src
$ source /opt/ros/indigo/setup.bash
$ cd ~/baxter_ws
$ catkin_make
$ catkin_make install

##Install Baxter SDK Dependencies

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install git-core python-argparse python-wstool python-vcstools python-rosdep ros-indigo-control-msgs ros-indigo-joystick-drivers

##Install Baxter Research Robot SDK

$ cd ~/baxter_ws/src
$ wstool init .
$ wstool merge https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RethinkRobotics/baxter/master/baxter_sdk.rosinstall
$ wstool update
$ source /opt/ros/indigo/setup.bash
$ cd ~/baxter_ws
$ catkin_make
$ catkin_make install

##baxter.sh Script

$ wget https://github.com/RethinkRobotics/baxter/raw/master/baxter.sh
$ chmod u+x baxter.sh

This files needs to be modified to have the correct hostname/IP address of both Baxter and the workstation. Baxters network address is his SerialCode.local, which for Zoidbot is 011505p0007.local. To do this, open the file in your favourite text editor and modify the following lines:

baxter_hostname="baxter_hostname.local"

Needs to become:

baxter_hostname="011505p0007.local"

If you have a hostname, you can also uncomment the following line and add your hostname. However, in mot cases you will need to put the IP address of your workstation.

your_ip="192.168.XXX.XXX"
#your_hostname="my_computer.local"

You can find your local IP address using the following command, and looking for the inet addr

$ ifconfig

Please Note: Set Either your computers IP address or hostname and comment out the remaining option. If you are using your hostname it must be resolvable to Baxter. After this, save and close the file.

##Initialize your SDK environment

$ cd~/baxter_ws
$ . baxter.sh

#Verify Environment

To verify your setup is correct type,

$ env | grep ROS

Check the following fields are correct:

• ROS_MASTER_URI - This should now contain your robot's hostname.

then either,

• ROS_IP - This should contain your workstation's IP address.

or

• ROS_HOSTNAME - If not using the workstation's IP address, the ROS_HOSTNAME field should contain your PC's hostname. Otherwise, this field should not be available.

Example scripts to run on Baxter can be found here.

#References

• Examples
• Rethink-Robotics Setup Guide