Getting Started

Note

If you are completely unfamiliar with the command line or basic git usage, see the Tutorial page before proceeding.

Installation

We only provide official support for Ubuntu 20.04 due to ROS2. Make sure you are on an Ubuntu 20.04 machine before continuing. Alternatively for Windows users, using WSL2 with Ubuntu 20.04 will work. The steps to set this up can be found here.

First, clone the repository from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/RoboJackets/robocup-software.git

Then cd to the repository you just cloned, and run the setup scripts to install all required dependencies:

cd robocup-software ./util/ubuntu-setup && ./util/git-setup

To simulate the vision data we’d get from a real field camera setup, we’ll use ER-Force’s simulator. For that, clone their repo, and cd into it.

git clone https://github.com/robotics-erlangen/framework.git
cd framework

Then, build their code with the following:

mkdir build && cd build cmake .. make simulator-cli

This builds an executable in framework/build/bin. Like any other executable, it can be run with [filepath-to-executable]. Since we’re already in the framework/build/ directory, simply run:

./bin/simulator-cli

Note also that the absolute filepath works from any directory:

~/framework/build/bin/simulator-cli

We’re a Division B team, so add the flag -g and the option 2020B to use the Division B field dimensions, like so:

./bin/simulator-cli -g 2020B

Sadly, this program has no output, so when you run it nothing will appear to happen. However, it will become obvious after you start our UI whether or not you’ve correctly started the simulator or not.

Now, make sure you’re on the most updated version of ros2 branch. This is where the latest working version of our codebase exists. (See “Github” doc. –TODO(Prabhanjan): transfer this to docs–)

git pull git checkout ros2

Then, source the ROS setup file. This allows your shell to use ROS commands.

source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash

If you’re on zsh, source setup.zsh instead. (If you don’t know what zsh is, you’re not on zsh.)

Then build the codebase. This compiles all of our code. On a VM, this step will take upwards of 15 minutes.

make perf

After building, we need to source our custom ROS setup. Run the following in the robocup-software directory:

source install/setup.bash

(Again, if you’re on zsh, source the .zsh version instead.)

Now we are good to go. As a sanity check, the following command should print out rj_robocup:

ros2 pkg list | grep rj_robocup

To launch our stack, which contains our AI that sends commands to the simulator, plus a UI to show what’s happening, run the following:

ros2 launch rj_robocup sim.launch.py

If everything is working properly, you should see the following window show up.

Shortcuts

Now that you know how to source dependencies, build, and run our code, you can take advantage of some neat shortcuts. These shortcuts all depend on the following knowledge:

Sourcing only needs to happen every time a new terminal is opened, and building only needs to happen when C++ or launch.py files are changed. (Python is not a compiled language; thus, most of those files do not need to be built when changed.)

So, after you’ve built once, the install/setup.bash script will exist in your version of the repo, and you won’t have to build again until you make changes to C++ or launch files. That means the next time you open up a new terminal, you can launch sim with:

. ./source.bash make run-sim

source.bash is an alias for the two source commands you saw above, and make run-sim is an alias for ros2 launch rj_robocup sim.launch.py.

Since Python is not compiled, if you’re exclusively working on Python files, and staying in one terminal, it’s likely that you’ll mostly only need:

make run-sim

However, if you’re working on C++ or launch files (or if someone else changes them on a different branch and you want their changes), you’ll need to build again to see your changes take effect. If you’ve already built once on your machine, though, you can build again more quickly with:

make again . ./source.bash

The source.bash line is necessary to source the file in install/, which is refreshed on each build. (Note: this does not build any CMake-related files, so if you’re editing those, use make perf as usual.)

There are a few different ways to build our code. See the makefile for more details, but in short:

make all         # builds with full debugging symbols make debug       #
alias for make all make all-release # builds with 0 debugging symbols make
perf        # builds with some debugging symbols; preferred method

TODO(Kevin): add description of running on field comp (move that md file over too)