ROS 2 Getting Started

Install ROS 2

Note

The ROS 2 Interbotix SLATE packages are only compatible with Humble on Ubuntu 22.04.

Follow the Ubuntu (Debian packages) ROS 2 installation guide on the ROS documentation site. Once installed, make sure to follow the How do I use the rosdep tool? guide to to set up and install the development and dependency toolchains.

Install the Interbotix ROS Slate Packages

  1. Clone the humble branch of the interbotix_ros_core repository into your colcon workspace.
$ mkdir -p ~/interbotix_ws/src
$ cd ~/interbotix_ws/src
$ git clone -b humble https://github.com/Interbotix/interbotix_ros_core.git
  1. Remove the COLCON_IGNORE file preventing the interbotix_ros_slate metapackage from being built.
$ rm ~/interbotix_ws/src/interbotix_ros_core/interbotix_ros_slate/COLCON_IGNORE
  1. Run rosdep in the root of the workspace to install all required dependencies.
$ cd ~/interbotix_ws
$ rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
  1. Build the workspace, making sure that you have sourced your ROS system installation first.
$ source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash
$ cd ~/interbotix_ws
$ colcon build

Post-Install

The USB-Serial converter device shares the same vendor and product ID with some brail readers. Because of this, the brltty program may claim the device, preventing its use by other drivers. Solving this issue is as simple as removing the package using apt.

$ sudo apt-get remove brltty

Verification

Configure your terminal environment, run the driver using ros2run, and check that the driver successfully connects to the base.

$ source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash
$ source ~/interbotix_ws/install/setup.bash
$ ros2 run interbotix_slate_driver slate_base_node