Getting Started¶

Install ROS and Catkin¶

Install ROS Melodic. It is easy to miss steps when going through the ROS installation tutorial. If you run into errors in the next few steps, a good place to start is to go back and make sure you have installed ROS correctly.

Once you have ROS installed, make sure you have the most up to date packages:

rosdep update
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Install catkin the ROS build system:

sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-catkin python-catkin-tools

Create A Catkin Workspace and Download MoveIt Source¶

These tutorials rely on the master branch of MoveIt, which requires a build from source. You will need to have a catkin workspace setup:

mkdir -p ~/ws_moveit/src
cd ~/ws_moveit/src

wstool init .
wstool merge -t . https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros-planning/moveit/master/moveit.rosinstall
wstool update -t .

Download Example Code¶

To easily follow along with these tutorials, you will need a ROBOT_moveit_config package. The default demo robot is the Panda arm from Franka Emika. To get a working panda_moveit_config package, we recommend you install from source.

Within your catkin workspace, download the tutorials as well as the panda_moveit_config package:

cd ~/ws_moveit/src
git clone https://github.com/ros-planning/moveit_tutorials.git -b master
git clone https://github.com/ros-planning/panda_moveit_config.git -b melodic-devel

Build your Catkin Workspace¶

The following will install from Debian any package dependencies not already in your workspace:

cd ~/ws_moveit/src
rosdep install -y --from-paths . --ignore-src --rosdistro melodic

The next command will configure your catkin workspace:

cd ~/ws_moveit
catkin config --extend /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO} --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
catkin build

Source the catkin workspace:

source ~/ws_moveit/devel/setup.bash

Optional: add the previous command to your .bashrc:

echo 'source ~/ws_moveit/devel/setup.bash' >> ~/.bashrc

Next Step¶

Visualize a robot with the interactive motion planning plugin for RViz