Enable programmatic control of the Boston Dynamic Spot robot through the Robot Operating System (ROS) interface.

The spot_ros_interface ROS package provides a ROS interface to the Spot API converting ROS messages to API/gRPC calls to the Spot robot.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10

https://github.com/boston-dynamics/spot-sdk/blob/master/docs/python/quickstart.md#getting-the-code

Follow Boston Dynamics' instructions for upgrading

• Configure your Ubuntu repositories to allow "restricted," "universe," and "multiverse". Follow instructions here. Remember to sudo apt-get update after this.

• Set up sources.list

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

• Set up keys

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver 'hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80' --recv-key C1CF6E31E6BADE8868B172B4F42ED6FBAB17C654

If you experience issues connecting to the keyserver, you can try substituting hkp://pgp.mit.edu:80

Alternatively, you can use curl instead of the apt-key command, which can be helpful if you are behind a proxy server:

curl -sSL 'http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xC1CF6E31E6BADE8868B172B4F42ED6FBAB17C654' | sudo apt-key add -

If you still experience issues like: gpg: keyserver receive failed: No dirmngr or gpg: can't connect to the agent: IPC connect call failed (see here and here), ensure dirmngr is installed:

sudo apt-get install dirmngr

If this still does not solve the problem:

sudo apt remove gpg
sudo apt install gnupg1

You should now be able to re-run the key setup command above.

• Install

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-noetic-desktop-full

This will take some time. Go grab a coffee ☕.

Once that is done, let us verify the installation. You must source this script in every bash terminal you use ROS in:

source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

To automatically source it whenever you open a new terminal, add it to your .bashrc:

echo "source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Note: If you were in a virtual environment, you will have to re-activate your virtual environment after sourcing your .bashrc

To verify the installation, run roscore in the terminal. This should start a roslaunch server without any errors. Feel free to kill the server (Ctrl+C) now.

Congratulations! You have just set up ROS. Now let's install the the dependencies.

Install VcXsrv: https://sourceforge.net/projects/vcxsrv/

Add the following to your .bashrc:

# Forward GUI windows to vcxsrv
export DISPLAY=:0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=

Start VcXsrv without native OpenGL:

Request spot.urdf and .stl mesh files from Boston Dynamics in order to be able to utilize the real-time RViz visualization of Spot's state. The directory structure must be as follows for compatibility with the rviz_display.launch file:

workspace_directory/
	...
	spot_urdf/
		...
		link_models/
			base.stl
			fl.lleg.stl
			fr.hip.stl
			...
			hl.uleg.stl
			hr.lleg.stl
		urdf/
			spot.urdf

Make install_dependencies.sh executable and run it:

cd ~/spot-ros-wrapper/src/install_script/
chmod +x install_dependencies.sh
./install_dependencies.sh

Now, go to your catkin workspace directory (e.g. ~/spot-ros-wrapper) and setup your catkin workspace:

cd ~/spot-ros-wrapper
catkin config --init --merge-devel --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
catkin config --extend /opt/ros/noetic

Note: The structure of a catkin workspace must be as follows. For more info on catkin workspaces and packages, consult the tutorials.

workspace_directory/
    src/
        package_1/
            CMakeLists.txt
            package.xml
            scripts/
            src/
        ...
        package_n/
            CMakeLists.txt
            package.xml
            scripts/
            src/
    build/                      -- Auto-generated by catkin build
    devel/                      -- Auto-generated by catkin build

Go to your catkin workspace directory, and build

cd ~/spot-ros-wrapper
catkin build

After the build finishes, you must source the environment. This must be done every time after building.

source ~/spot-ros-wrapper/devel/setup.bash

Now let us start the ROS Wrapper Node. We first need to run roscore:

roscore

That process must be up and running whenever you want to run ROS Nodes.

Open a new terminal, source your virtual environment and source the latest build:

# In a new terminal
activate_venv spot_venv
cd ~/spot-ros-wrapper
source devel/setup.bash

And finally, let us start the ROS Wrapper node:

rosrun spot_ros_interface  spot_ros_interface.py --username USERNAME --password PASSWORD  192.168.80.3

Note: Spot's default IP address is 192.168.80.3 over WiFi, and 10.0.0.3 over ethernet.

Note: You must be able to ping Spot's IP addess in order to communicate. The easiest way to do so is to connect to Spot's Wi-Fi hotspot directly, or to its ethernet port. For more information, reference Spot's instruction manuals on ways to communicate.

With the ROS wrapper running, open a new terminal and run keyboard_teleop.py in the spot_ros_interface ROS package:

rosrun spot_ros_interface keyboard_teleop.py

and follow the instructions on screen.

Ensure spot_ros_interface.py is running.

Note: If Spot is in a faulty state and/or upside down, make sure to call the self-right command first (from the keyboard_teleop application, press "r").

roslaunch spot_urdf rviz_display.launch

Potential Issues:

• Spot model RViz visualization is white and not oriented properly

  • Solution: Ensure spot_ros_interface and robot_state_publisher nodes are running (the latter should have started by the rvis_display.launch file).

• The occupancy grid is not being displayed:

  • Solution: Ensure that RViz is set to display a Marker type msg (on the left-hand panel), and that it is subscribed to the occupancy_grid topic.

ROS package guidelines

Contribute

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments.