Documentation

The stack contains all of the Orocos Toolchain v2.4.x integrated in the ROS build system. The orocos_toolchain_ros stack contains utilmm, utilrb, typelib and orogen, to automatically create ros packages for the automatic typekit generation for C++ classes.

On top of the Orocos Toolchain v2.4.x this stack contains:

• rtt_ros_integration: This package contains the following:

  • The ros-plugin: this RTT plugin allows Orocos/RTT components to contact the ROS master
  • CMake macro's to automatically create Orocos/RTT typekits and transport plugins from .msg files

• rtt_ros_integration_std_msgs: This package shows how the CMake macro's have to be used, it creates the Orocos/RTT typekits and transport plugins for all roslib and std_msgs messages

• rtt_ros_integration_example: This package shows how the rtt_ros_integration should be used from an Orocos/RTT user/developer point of view. It contains a HelloRobot component which can be contacted using rostopic echo

For Orocos/RTT new-commers, there are also the rtt_exercises. They can be found at https://gitorious.org/orocos-toolchain/rtt_examples ,and have native ROS build support.

If anyone has any questions please do not hesitate to contact the orocos-users, orocos-dev or ros-users mailing list.

Installation

First, install 'regular' ROS on your system following these instructions: Install

Prebuild deb packages are available for Ubuntu systems. Installation is as simple as

sudo apt-get install ros-(cturtle/diamondback)-orocos-toolchain-ros

Installation for other systems can be done through git. All code is currently on git on http://git.mech.kuleuven.be/robotics/orocos_toolchain_ros.git . You must extract the software in a (sub)directory of your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:

cd $HOME
mkdir ros
cd ros
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$HOME/ros:$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

Most people set that export statement in their .bashrc file, right after they sourced the 'setup.bash' file. Then in $HOME/ros:

git clone http://git.mech.kuleuven.be/robotics/orocos_toolchain_ros.git

Make sure to either check out the diamondback branch (for diamondback)

cd orocos_toolchain_ros
git checkout -b diamondback origin/diamondback

or cturtle branch (for cturtle)

cd orocos_toolchain_ros
git checkout -b cturtle origin/cturtle

initialise and update the git submodules

git submodule init
git submodule update --recursive

and build the orocos_toolchain_ros stack

rosmake --rosdep-install orocos_toolchain_ros

Don't forget to source the Orocos specific env.sh script in order to use the orogen functionality:

. env.sh
echo -e "\n. $(pwd)/env.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

This file needs to be sourced in addition to ROS's setup.bash file.

Using

The deployer, taskbrowser and any program part of OCL needs to be run with the rosrun command:

rosrun ocl deployer-gnulinux

You should now proceed to the Orocos Toolchain Main Page for further documentation and examples.