Installation

The installation as follows was tested on Ubuntu 14.04 with ROS Indigo and Jade.

Step 1. Install joint-control-pkgs

Follow the installation instructions given in the joint-control-pkgs wiki.

Step 2. Install additional dependencies

Addionally to the dependencies installed with joint-control-pkgs, you will need the following packages:

• gazebo_ros_control
• optional: (only for the tutorials, not required to compile packages)
  • MoveIt!.

On Ubuntu/debian, you may install the ROS packages using the package manager

sudo apt-get install ros-<distro>-gazebo-ros-control

[optional] Install common_sensors

Additionally, you can, but do not have to, install the common_sensors package. You will only need this if you would like to use the sensor in the tutorials, which is not the default setting. Follow instructions in the README here to install the packages.

[optional] Install MoveIt! for the tutorials

This is not required to compile, but you will need it as runtime dependency if you want to do the MoveIt! tutorial.

sudo apt-get install \
    ros-<distro>-moveit-core \
    ros-<distro>-moveit-ros \
    ros-<distro>-moveit-planners-ompl \
    ros-<distro>-moveit-fake-controller-manager \
    ros-<distro>-moveit-simple-controller-manager \

Step 3. Install jaco-arm-pkgs

Add the git repository to your catkin workspace:

cd <your-catkin-ws>/src
git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/jaco-arm-pkgs.git

Hint: Alternatively to cloning the repositry directly into the catkin source folder, you may also clone the repositories elsewhere and then create a softlink to the main folders in your catkin source directory:
ln -s <path to jaco-arm-pkgs>

Compile

To compile, you can now use catkin_make as usual:

cd ..
catkin_make

Noetic only: joint state publisher gui (only needed for tutorials)

If you are on Noetic/Ubuntu 20.04, you will have to install the joint state publisher gui

sudo apt install joint-state-publisher-gui

You will also need to do a manual adjustment of a launch file, to load the joint state publisher gui. In the following file:

rosed jaco_description jaco_gazebo.launch

Replace joint_state_publisher by joint_state_publisher_gui, as follows:

  <node if="$(arg load_joint_state_publisher)" name="joint_state_publisher_gui" pkg="joint_state_publisher_gui" type="joint_state_publisher_gui">
    <param name="use_gui" value="true" />
    <param name="rate" value="10" />
    <remap from="joint_states" to="$(arg joint_state_publisher_topic)" />
  </node>

For reasons of backwards compatibility, this fix will only be applied to the master branch once Noetic becomes the standard.