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Installation

Setting up Operating System

Ubuntu 22.04 is recommended for ROS if you already have Ubuntu 20.04, that is also fine although for versions older than this we recommend upgrading to 22.04.

For those who currently have Windows as the only OS on their machine, the best way to start using Ubuntu would be to dual boot. Here is a guide on how to do this or you can go through this Youtube video . For MacOS users, dual booting is an option but it is recommend to use a virtual machine.

If you are unable to dual boot for any reason, you can try setting up a virtual machine. The first step in this is to install a virtualisation software. For Windows you can use either VirtualBox (free) or Vmware Workstation and for MacOS either VirtualBox (free), Vmware Fusion or Parallels. After getting one of the above, follow the instructions given here (skip ahead to the Download Image section). After completing the given procedure you will be equipped with all the basic tools required for Robotics including ROS,catkin and git.

In the unfortunate case that the above options do not work, for Windows users there is still a way - WSL. Do be warned however, this path is fraught with frustration and much debugging. Only continue if you have exhausted other options. For a guide on setting up WSL for ROS, look here.

For those whom none of the above are possible, consider using the online browser based ROS Development Studio. Keep in mind that it has a limited access time per week and performance may be questionable.

Installing Robot Operating System (ROS)

For Ubuntu 22.04 users : ROS Humble Hawksbill
For Ubuntu 20.04 users : ROS Noetic

  • Code Editors : VSCode is recommended for boosting productivity​ which has plugins for python and ROS. A comprehensive guide for how to integrate ROS into your favourite IDE can be found ​here​.

  • For installing developed ROS packages replace with name of the ROS package.

    sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-<package_name>
  • Because of having conflicting python path Anaconda and ROS can’t be used in same. For dealing with this edit your .bashrc file by commenting the anaconda python path like this
    //  export PATH="/home//anaconda3/bin:$PATH "
  • It is recommended to source the workspace on startup by editing your .bashrc file by including following line. Replace with the path of your workspace
    source <workspace_path>/devel/setup.bash

Note : Two workspaces can’t be sourced at the same time.