Installing ROS Indigo onto NAO with help of virtual-nao

To put together ROS Indigo and naoqi-sdk 2.0.2, I use a virtual-nao that runs OpenNAO to compile ROS packages, then install these compiled packages onto the real NAO. In this tutorial, I describe the steps I took to:

• Get a virtual-nao provided by Aldebaran Robotics
• Compile ROS packages on virtual-nao
• Copy compiled files from virtual-nao to real NAO

• And run it

Now that everything is clear, let's get to actions!

Get the virtual-nao

Please contact Aldebaran Robotics if you don't have access to their virtual-nao packages. At the time of the writing, I use opennao-virtual-nao-2.0.3

Compile NAO ROS packages on the virual-nao

First of all, let's create our workspace.

mkdir -p my_workspace/src
mkdir -p my_workspace/external
cd my_workspace

Prepare the environment

On the terminal of the virtual robot, run the following commands:

sudo bash -c 'echo app-portage/gentoolkit >> /etc/portage/package.keywords'
sudo bash -c 'echo dev-python/setuptools >> /etc/portage/package.keywords'
sudo emerge setuptools
sudo easy_install rosdep rosinstall_generator wstool rosinstall rospkg empy nose catkin_pkg pyyaml netifaces
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
sudo emerge tinyxml cxsparse cholmod poco log4cxx gtest

Because of the way emerge works, you actually need to call the emerge command twice to get the packages to install. If required, you will also need to follow the instructions to add the argument --autounmask-write to emerge and run sudo etc-update in between. Be sure to merge in the suggested config changes.

Some packages are not available to install from emerge, we will need to download the code source and install them by ourselves, following the below instructions:

Install SIP

cd external
hg clone http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/hg/sip
cd sip
python build.py prepare
python configure.py
make
sudo make install
cd ../..

Install lz4

cd external
svn checkout http://lz4.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ lz4
cd lz4/
make
sudo make install
cd ../..

Install console_bridge

cd external
git clone --depth 5 git://github.com/ros/console_bridge.git
cd console_bridge
cmake . 
make
sudo make install
cd ../..

Install urdfdom-headers

cd external
git clone --depth 5 https://github.com/ros/urdfdom_headers.git urdfdom-headers
cd urdfdom-headers
cmake . -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
sudo make install
cd ../..

Install urdfdom

cd external
git clone --depth 5 https://github.com/ros/urdfdom.git urdfdom
cd urdfdom
cmake . -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
sudo make install
cd ../..

Then add #define TIXML_USE_STL as the first line of /usr/include/tinyxml.h

touch ~/temp && echo '#define TIXML_USE_STL' | cat - /usr/include/tinyxml.h > ~/temp && sudo mv ~/temp /usr/include/tinyxml.h

Compile ROS packages for NAO

In the terminal of the virtual-nao, run the following commands to download the source code of necessary packages:

rosinstall_generator nao_robot --rosdistro indigo --deps > nao_ros_indigo.rosinstall
wstool init src nao_ros_indigo.rosinstall
cd src
wstool update -j4
cd ..
rosdep install --from-path src -i -y
cd src
git clone https://github.com/ros/roslint
git clone https://github.com/ros/xacro.git
cd ..

Compile the code source by running:

src/catkin/bin/catkin_make_isolated --install -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

It will take awhile to compile all the packages, maybe long enough to finish a coffee

Copy compiled files onto the real robot

So, the compilation finished without errors. That's a great news! Now we can move on to the awesome step: putting ROS onto your robot.

Prepare dependencies:

cp /usr/lib/liblog4cxx* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/log4cxx install_isolated/include/
cp /usr/lib/libapr* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/apr* install_isolated/include/
cp /usr/lib/libtinyxml* install_isolated/lib/
cp /usr/lib/libPoco* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/Poco* install_isolated/include/
cp -r /usr/lib/liburdfdom* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/urdf* install_isolated/include/
cp -r /usr/lib/libcxsparse* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/lib/libcholmod* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/cholmod* install_isolated/include/
cp -r /usr/lib/liblz4* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/include/lz4* install_isolated/include/
cp -r /usr/local/lib/libconsole_bridge* install_isolated/lib/
cp -r /usr/local/include/console_bridge* install_isolated/include/
cp -r /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/* install_isolated/lib/python2.7/site-packages/
cp /usr/bin/rosversion install_isolated/bin/

Cleaning to send on robot:

rm -rf install_clean
cp -r install_isolated install_clean
rm -f `find install_clean/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ -name "*.pyc"` `find install_clean/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ -name "*.pyo"`
rm -rf install_clean/include/
rm -f `find install_clean/ -name "*.cmake"`
rm -f `find install_clean/ -name "package.xml"`
rm -f `find install_clean/ -name "*.in"`
rm -rf `find install_clean/ -type d -empty`

On your virtual-nao, copy everything onto your robot:

cd install_clean
tar czvf ../install_ros.tar.gz .
cd ..
scp install_ros.tar.gz nao@<Your_NAO_IP>:/home/nao/

Connect by ssh to your real NAO then run the following commands:

ssh nao@<Your_NAO_IP>
mkdir ros_install_folder
cd ros_install_folder
tar xzvf ../install_ros.tar.gz

Run the ros packages on NAO

From the terminal ssh-ed with your robot, execute:

cd ros_install_folder
source setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<your NAO's IP>:11311
export ROS_IP=<your NAO's IP>
roslaunch nao_bringup nao.launch force_python:=true

A generic way :

cd ros_install_folder
source setup.bash
export ROS_IP=`ifconfig | grep -Eo 'inet (addr:)?([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -Eo '([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -v '127.0.0.1'`
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://$ROS_IP:11311
roslaunch nao_bringup nao.launch force_python:=true

In another terminal ssh-ed with your robot, execute following commands to make your robot say "Hello":

cd ros_install_folder
source setup.bash
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<your NAO's IP>:11311
export ROS_IP=<your NAO's IP>
rostopic pub /speech std_msgs/String hello

A generic way :

cd ros_install_folder
source setup.bash
export ROS_IP=`ifconfig | grep -Eo 'inet (addr:)?([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -Eo '([0-9]*\.){3}[0-9]*' | grep -v '127.0.0.1'`
export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://$ROS_IP:11311
rostopic pub /speech std_msgs/String hello

Have fun exploring!

Important note:

• During the compilation of NAO ROS packages, if it complains about missing libraries, you should use emerge or pip to install these missing libraries. If not, download the source code of these libraries then compile them and install them onto the machine.
• In case you want to compile your ros package with naoqiSDK-c++, you can get the naoqiSDK for cross compiling from Aldebaran website, then copy the folder libnaoqi-sysroot onto your virtual-nao, and set it to AL_DIR. After the AL_DIR setting, you should be able to compile your package with naoqiSDK successfully.

• Those missing libraries that you needed during compilation of NAO ROS packages on the virtual-nao can be needed on the real NAO (as they have the same OpenNAO architecture) to run ROS, so when NAO complains that some libraries <names> are not available, copy the respective installed libs from your virtual-nao to your real NAO (don't forget to respect the folder structure).