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The Course Repo

A ROS Metapackage called tuos_ros has been put together to support these courses. This package is available on GitHub here. This repo contains the following ROS packages:

Package Name Description
tuos_examples Some example scripts to support certain exercises in COM2009 Assignment #1
tuos_msgs Some custom ROS messages to support certain exercises in COM2009 Assignment #1 (to learn how to create your own custom ROS messages see here)
tuos_simulations Some Gazebo simulations to support certain exercises in COM2009 Assignment #1
tuos_tb3_tools Scripts that run on the real Waffles, and some RViz configs to support real robot work too
com2009_simulations Simulation resources to support your development work in COM2009 Assignment #2

Installing

The tuos_ros course repo is already installed and ready to go in WSL-ROS, for those who use it, and on the Robotics Laptops. To install the packages in your own local ROS installation, follow the steps here.

  1. Make sure you've already set up a Catkin Workspace in your home directory.

  2. Navigate to your Catkin Workspace src directory:

    cd ~/catkin_ws/src/

  3. Clone the repo from GitHub:

    git clone https://github.com/tom-howard/tuos_ros.git

  4. Run catkin build to compile the packages:

    catkin build

  5. Then re-source your .bashrc:

    source ~/.bashrc

Verify

Once you've installed it, then you can verify that the build process has worked using the following command:

roscd tuos_ros

Which should take you to a directory within the repo that's also called tuos_ros, i.e.:

~/catkin_ws/src/tuos_ros/tuos_ros

Updating

The course repo may be updated every now and again, so its worth checking regularly that you have the most up-to-date version. You can do this by pulling down the latest updates from GitHub using git pull:

roscd && cd ../src/tuos_ros/ && git pull

If you see the following message:

-bash: cd: tuos_ros/: No such file or directory

... then go back and make sure you've installed the repo first!

Then, run catkin build and re-source your environment:

roscd && cd .. && catkin build && source ~/.bashrc