Getting Started

Here, we will setup your environment to use Cartesian Motion Base (CMB) and run a simple example. CMB is designed to work with cartesian controllers in ROS 2. But, you can also use other controllers that support Cartesian commands.

1. Installation ROS 2 distribution and tools:

Make sure you have ROS 2 Humble or later installed on your system.

Install rosdep to install system dependencies:

sudo apt install python3-rosdep
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Install vcstool:

sudo apt install python3-vcstool

Install cyclonedds for ROS 2 communication(if you haven’t already):

sudo apt install ros-humble-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp
echo "export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp" >> ~/.bashrc

2. Download the cartesian_motion_base source code:

mkdir -p ~/cmb_ws/src
cd ~/cmb_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/leledeyuan00/cartesian_motion_base.git
vcs import < cartesian_motion_base/cartesian_motion_base.repos

3. Build your colcon workspace:

cd ~/cmb_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
colcon build --symlink-install

4. Setup your environment:

Source the workspace:

source ~/cmb_ws/install/setup.bash

Optional: add the previous command to your ~/.bashrc:

echo "source ~/cmb_ws/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Note

Sourcing the setup.bash automatically in your ~/.bashrc is not required and often skipped by advanced users who use more than one Colcon workspace at a time, but we recommend it for simplicity.

5. Next Steps

Nice job! Next, we will visualize a simple Cartesian motion example using Gazebo