How to Install CoSTAR

Note: CoSTAR installation has only been tested on ROS Indigo (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). For instructions on Indigo installation, please see here. There is a prototype install script available here that you can try out as well.

Prerequisites

To use the CoSTAR system, you will need to install the following software packages:

Python (tested version 2.7.12)
Git (tested version 1.9.1)
ROS (tested ROS Indigo, Ubuntu 14.04)
Catkin Build Tools
OpenCV 2.4 nonfree (for CoSTAR perception only)

You can download all the required packages to use CoSTAR with ROS Indigo from the Ubuntu repositories with this command:

# set your ros distro 
export ROS_DISTRO=indigo

# install rosdep and catkin
sudo apt-get install -y python-catkin-pkg python-rosdep python-wstool python-catkin-tools ros-$ROS_DISTRO-catkin

# init your rosdep (if you have not already done so)
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Step 1. Get Packages From Git

We suggest that you download all the required packages before building your catkin workspace. Change directory to the src directory in your catkin workspace. Then download the main CoSTAR stack and its ROS dependencies from GitHub and use rosdep to get other dependencies:

cd path/to/your/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/cpaxton/costar_stack.git  
git clone https://github.com/SalvoVirga/iiwa_stack.git  
git clone https://github.com/ros-industrial/robotiq.git  
git clone https://github.com/jbohren/rqt_dot.git  
git clone https://github.com/sniekum/ar_track_alvar.git  
git clone https://github.com/sniekum/ar_track_alvar_msgs.git  
git clone https://github.com/gt-ros-pkg/hrl-kdl.git
git clone https://github.com/xqms/ur_modern_driver.git --branch thread_safety
rosdep install -y --from-paths ./ --ignore-src --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO

IMPORTANT NOTE ON UR MODERN DRIVER: UR modern driver is somewhat unstable. We recommend following the advice from this pull request addressing thread safety. For our tests, we used the thread safety branch from Max Schwarz. This has not been tested on a wide variety of Universal Robot platforms, and still has its issues.

We observed unpredictable and dangerous behavior using the base branch of UR Modern Driver. For more information check out the original UR modern driver repo.

Step 2. Get Perception prerequisites

git clone git@github.com:jhu-lcsr/ObjRecRANSAC.git

ObjRecRANSAC is used by sp_segmenter, the key part of the CoSTAR perception pipeline.

Step 3. Build catkin workspace

Change directory into catkin workspace folder and run:

catkin build

Note: Please use this command to build your catkin workspace instead of catkin_make.

Debugging:

CoSTAR is distributed as a single large package. This means that

For problems with message: “Assertion failed: check for file existence, but filename (RT_LIBRARY-NOTFOUND) unset. Message: RT Library.” Please clean the catkin build folder and rebuild.
For problems in relation to predicator_collision, please use the following command:
cd path/to/costar_stack/costar_predicator/predicator_collision
touch CATKIN_IGNORE
1. For problems with message: “Errors: iiwa_hw:make”. Please use the following command: cd path/to/iiwa_stack/iiwa_hw
  touch CATKIN_IGNORE
2. For problems with message: “[ERROR] [1474482887.121864954, 0.669000000]: Initializing controller ‘joint_state_controller’ failed”. Please try installing the following packages:
  sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-joint-state-controller

Step 4. Run simulation

[Optional] Checkout an example CoSTAR workspace from github into ~/.costar by running:

cd && git clone git@github.com:cpaxton/costar_files.git .costar\

Now you can run the simulation with following commands. Please remember to run source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash before executing any of these commands, and consider adding this line to ~/.bashrc.

roslaunch iiwa_gazebo iiwa_gazebo.launch trajectory:=false  
roslaunch costar_bringup iiwa14_s_model.launch sim:=true start_sim:=false  

If everything shows up, CoSTAR system is then successfully installed. Enjoy!

The top should say “Robot Mode: Idle.” If you installed the sample workspace, open the Menu (lower right) and click Waypoints. Put the robot into Servo mode, highlight some waypoints, and click Servo to Waypoint (the purple button on the Waypoints popup). Not all the waypoints are guaranteed to work for this robot, but you should be able to get the robot to move.

CoSTAR is currently set up to launch our two testbed systems: a KUKA LBR iiwa 14 with a 3-finger Robotiq gripper and a Universal Robots UR5 with a 2-finger Robotiq gripper. We plan to add some funcitonality to support additional platforms.

If you are interested in supporting another platform or run into other issues trying to run this code, please contact Chris Paxton (cpaxton@jhu.edu).

Other Information

Notes on installing Gazebo