Machine setup

Install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 16.04 or 20.04 on a host machine, and make sure that you can checkout and build code.

sudo apt-get install build-essential git

Note: You will need 4 GBs of RAM to compile the software. If you don't have that much RAM available, please use swap space.

Note: Please ensure you install Ubuntu 16.04 or 20.04. At this time we do not support any other operating system or Ubuntu versions.

Note: Please ensure you install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. We do not support running ISAAC Software on 32-bit systems.

The isaac repo depends on some astrobee packages, therefore, astrobee needs to be installed beforehand. See the Astrobee Robot Software Installation Instructions for detailed setup instructions.

Checkout the project source code

At this point you need to decide where you'd like to put the ISAAC workspace and code (ISAAC_WS) on your machine, add this to your .bashrc or .zshrc for persistence:

export ISAAC_WS=$HOME/isaac

First, clone the flight software repository:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/nasa/isaac.git --branch develop $ISAAC_WS/src

Checkout the submodule:

pushd $ISAAC_WS/src
git submodule update --init --recursive
popd

Dependencies

Next, install all required dependencies: Note: root access is necessary to install the packages below Note: Before running this please ensure that your system is completely updated by running 'sudo apt-get update' and then 'sudo apt-get upgrade'

pushd $ISAAC_WS/src/scripts/setup ./install_desktop_packages.sh ./build_install_dependencies.sh sudo rosdep init rosdep update popd

Configuring the build

Source your astrobee build environment, for example as:

source $ASTROBEE_WS/devel/setup.bash

The configure script prepares your build directory for compiling the code. Note that configure.sh is simply a wrapper around CMake that provides an easy way of turning on and off options. To see which options are supported, simply run configure.sh -h.

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/configure.sh -l
source ~/.bashrc
popd

If you run a Zsh session, then

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/configure.sh -l
source ~/.zshrc
popd

By default, the catkin uses the following paths:

devel build path: $ISAAC_WS/devel
install build path: $ISAAC_WS/install If you want to explicitly specify the workspace and/or install directories, set $WORKSPACE_PATH and $INSTALL_PATH to the desired paths and use the -p ad -w flags as shown:
```
$ISAAC_WS/src/scripts/configure.sh -l -p $INSTALL_PATH -w $WORKSPACE_PATH
```

Note: If a workspace is specified but not an explicit install directory, install location will be $WORKSPACE_PATH/install.

The configure script modifies your .bashrc/.zshrc to source setup.bash/setup.zsh for the current ROS distribution and to set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH. It is suggested to examine it and see if all changes were made correctly.

Building the code

To build, run catkin build in the $WORKSPACE_PATH. Note that depending on your host machine, this might take in the order of tens of minutes to complete the first time round. Future builds will be faster, as only changes to the code are rebuilt, and not the entire code base.

pushd $ISAAC_WS
catkin build
popd

If you are working in simulation only, then you're all done! The next steps are only for running ISAAC onboard Astrobee.

Cross-compiling isaac (NASA only)

To cross-compile ISAAC, one must first cross compile the astobee code using the NASA_INSTALL instructions. Note that ASTROBEE_WS and ARMHF_CHROOT_DIR must be defined!

Cross compiling for the robot follows the same process, except the configure script takes a -a flag instead of -l.

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/configure.sh -a
popd

Or with explicit build and install paths:

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/configure.sh -a -p $INSTALL_PATH -w $WORKSPACE_PATH
popd

Warning: $INSTALL_PATH and $WORKSPACE_PATH used for cross compiling HAVE to be different than the paths for native build! See above for the default values for these.

Once the code has been built, it also installs the code to a singular location. CMake remembers what $INSTALL_PATH you specified, and will copy all products into this directory.

Install the code on the robot (NASA only)

Once the installation has completed, copy the install directory to the robot. This script assumes that you are connected to the Astrobee network, as it uses rsync to copy the install directory to ~/armhf on the two processors. It takes the robot name as an argument. Here we use p4d.

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/install_to_astrobee.sh $INSTALL_PATH p4d
popd

Here, p4d is the name of the robot, which may be different in your case.

Build ISAAC debian (NASA only)

To build a debian you must first confirm that cross-compiling is functional. Once it is:

pushd $ISAAC_WS
./src/scripts/build/build_debian.sh
popd

Switching build profiles

To alternate between native and armhf (cross-compile) profiles:

catkin profile set native
catkin profile set armhf