SC2 Getting Started

Swarmathon Team Code for the NASA Space Challenge 2 Competition

Hardware Requirements

NVidia Graphics Card

Hardware Recommendations

• 2.6 Ghz I-7 Processor
• 8 Gb Ram (more is better)

Software Requirements

• Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04
• Docker Nvidia Support (see below for specific instructions) Docker General Instructions
• Robot Operating System ROS
  • Getting Started with ROS in C Guide

Software Installation

Setup Ubuntu 18.04 as the operating system. It is not recommended to install within a virtual machine.

Update and Upgrade current software packages

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Change to the official Nvidia Driver

• Left click Activities in the upper left from the desktop
• Search for Software & Updates and select the file
• Left click the Additional Drivers Tab, it will take a moment to search for the drivers
• Select the option for the Nvidia driver metapackage (proprietary, tested)
• Apply Changes
• Note, if you are experiences Ubuntu locking up, do this first.

Install Docker

If installing docker for the first time (if not, you made need to upgrade or remove and install, see general docker instructions above).
Make sure the Team Leader has added you to the Docker Hub

sudo apt install docker.io

Update Nvidia drivers to work with Docker

Install Curl

sudo apt install curl

Add repositories

distribution=$(. /etc/os-release;echo $ID$VERSION_ID)
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -
curl -s -L https://nvidia.github.io/nvidia-docker/$distribution/nvidia-docker.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nvidia-docker.list

Install Nvidia Docker support packages

 sudo apt update 
 sudo apt install nvidia-container-toolkit

Restart Docker daemon with Nvidia support

sudo systemctl restart docker

Pull docker image

sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}

• If you are asked for a password here, this is your sudo password
• Open a new terminal window and type

docker login -u swarmathon

• Use the SC2 swarmathon team password

Setup gitlab ssh keys

We will use ssh keys to access the gitlab submodule. Follow these instructions: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ssh/

Clone the Github repository

git clone git@github.com:BCLab-UNM/SC2.git #ssh
#or
git clone https://github.com/BCLab-UNM/SC2.git #https

cd SC2 # enter the repo directory
git submodule update --init --recursive #After cloning this repository you need to initialize and update the submodule(s)

Download files and start simulation

• In terminal move to the srcp2-competitors folder (default command below, if you put it somewhere else, go there)

cd srcp2-competitors

• Download and simulation

./docker/scripts/launch/roslaunch_docker --run-round 1

• Download may take a while, to watch, start a new terminal window and type

tail -f /tmp/srcp2/simulation/docker.log

• When completed a Gazebo window will open with base and robots loaded.
• Press the single arrow on the bottom of the Gazebo screen (most left arrow) to start running

Getting ROS topics from container

Make sure ROS (Melodic) is installed, if not see Software Requirements, ROS section
Note: There are a lot of topics

ROS_MASTER_URI=http://localhost:11311 

source ./docker/scripts/srcp2_setup.bash
rostopic list

Using the API

We can access it in an ipython frame with a eval rollback to controll the rover

pull, clean, build source, then run the launch file this will start up the fakeOdom and Driver service

git pull #just do this out of habit
source ./srcp2-competitors/ros_workspace/install/setup.bash #build will fail if you don't
catkin clean -y 
catkin build
source ./devel/setup.bash
roslaunch ./launch/scoot.launch "name:=small_scout_1"

other term, will create a scoot instance and opens an ipython frame to run code from

source ./devel/setup.bash
rosrun scoot Scoot.py __ns:=small_scout_1

Try out

scoot.turn(math.pi/4)
scoot.drive(1)

Scout Search Behaviors

roslaunch ./launch/scoot.launch "name:=small_scout_1" "search:=searchRandomWalk"

or

roslaunch ./launch/scoot.launch "name:=small_scout_1" "search:=DDSA"

Docker submission

Reference: https://gitlab.com/scheducation/srcp2-competitors/-/wikis/Documentation/Rules/Completion-and-Submission

To build a submission docker image run the buildSubmission.sh script in the docker directory. This script will build the swarmathon:submission docker image using this project and build the srcp2 submission using the supplied build-submission-image.bash script. To test the submission docker image, run the testSubmission.sh script with a running srcp2 gazebo simulation.