Baxter Research sdk installtion

The first step to work with baxter “the research robot” is to install the baxter research sdk, which is a collection of ros packages that can control Baxter's functionalities. In this tutorial we will learn how install baxter research sdk with it's deependencies. We also learn to install some important packages needed to work with baxter, ex: moveit.

Step 1: install a version of ROS, according to your requirements. If you use Ubuntu 12.04 you should install ROS groovy or ROS hydro. The groovey and hydro version of the ros have compatibility with Ubuntu 12.04. If you work in ubuntu 14.04, you should install ROS indigo, you can install previous versions of ROS in ubuntu 14.04, but then you will not be able to use the latest update of the baxter software, which is currently in version 1.1. You can see previous tutorials to know how to install ROS.

Step 2: Before installing the a baxter research sdk, you need to confirm which version of sdk software your baxter is using. For example, if your robot use the software version 1, and you install the software version 1.1, all the programs will through the “software mismatch” error. To know the software version of you robot, you need to access the field service menu (FSM) of the robot.

1. First turn off your robot, and plug in a usb keyboard into the usb port of baxter.

2. You will need to hit <Alt+FF> on the keyboard during the boot-up to trigger the FSM.

To know more about field service menu, wee the documentation here http://sdk.rethinkrobotics.com/wiki/Field_Service_Menu_%28FSM%29#Quickstart_-_FSM_Activation_.2F_Deactivation

Step 3: Once you know about your software version of baxter, you can install the research sdk on your workstation. First downlaod and install the dependencies of research sdk.

$ sudo apt-get install python-wstool python-rosdep

Step 4: You need to create a new ros workspace for the research sdk

$ mkdir -p ~/ros_ws/src
$ cd ~/ros_ws/src

Step 5: 3. Download and copy the rosinstall file to the root of your Catkin workspace using wstool.

$ wstool init .
$ wstool merge https://raw.github.com/RethinkRobotics/baxter/master/baxter_sdk.rosinstall
$ wstool update
$ cd ..

This pulls down the development branches from all of our repositories into your source directory.

Step 6 : Source ros setup if you haven't yet

$ source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash

Step 7: Build and Install

$ catkin_make
$ catkin_make install

Step 8: Use the baxter.sh script for proper environment setup

$ cp src/baxter/baxter.sh .

Step 9: Edit the baxter.sh script, modifying the 'baxter_hostname' and 'your_ip' :

# Specify Baxter's hostname
**baxter_hostname="baxter_hostname.local"**

# Set *Either* your computers ip address or hostname.

**your_ip="192.168.XXX.XXX"**

Step 10: Initialize your sdk environment

$ ./baxter.sh

video example will be added soon describing how to install the sdk