Installing Warthog Software

Note

To get started with the Warthog, make sure you have a working ROS installation set up on your computer. The physical Warthog robot comes ROS pre-configured, but if you are working on your own computer you may need to follow the instructions on the ROS wiki to get set up.

Add Clearpath Debian Package Repository

Before you can install the Warthog packages, you need to configure Ubuntu’s APT package manager to add Clearpath’s package server. You can do this by running the following commands in the terminal:

  1. First install the authentication key for the packages.clearpathrobotics.com repository:

wget https://packages.clearpathrobotics.com/public.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

  1. Add the debian sources for the repository:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb https://packages.clearpathrobotics.com/stable/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/clearpath-latest.list'

  1. Update your computer’s package cache:

sudo apt-get update

Installing the Packages

Now that your computer is configured to use Clearpath’s deb repository, you can install the Warthog packages needed for this tutorial by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-warthog-desktop

Installing from Source

The source code for the base Warthog packages is available on GitHub. We recommend installing the software through apt, as described above. But if you want to modify Warthog’s behaviour, or simply learn more about how the robot is configured, you can check out and build the packages yourself. These instructions assume you are at least somewhat familiar with building ROS packages using the Catkin build system.

First create a workspace directory and initialize it:

mkdir ~/warthog_ws
cd ~/warthog_ws
mkdir src
catkin_init_workspace src

Next clone the Warthog repositories using git:

cd ~/warthog_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/warthog-cpr/warthog.git
git clone https://github.com/warthog-cpr/warthog_simulator.git
git clone https://github.com/warthog-cpr/warthog_desktop.git

Note that there are three separate git repositories being cloned:

Git repository

ROS Packages

Description

warthog

  • warthog_control

  • warthog_description

  • warthog_msgs

Common packages for the Warthog platform, including messages and robot description. These packages are relevant to all workspaces, including simulation, desktop, or use on the robot itself.

warthog_simulator

  • warthog_gazebo

  • warthog_simulator

Packages essential for running warthog simulations. Requires the packages from the warthog repository.

warthog_desktop

  • warthog_desktop

  • warthog_viz

Packages for controlling & monitoring the physical robot and/or simulation. Requires the packages from the warthog repository

Now install additional ROS dependencies:

cd ~/warthog_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro=kinetic -y

Finally build the workspace:

cd ~/warthog_ws
catkin_make

You can now source your workspace’s in order to make use of the packages you just built:

cd ~/warthog_ws
source devel/setup.bash

To test that everything worked, try running the Warthog simulation that we’ll be using in the next portion of this tutorial:

roslaunch warthog_gazebo warthog_world.launch