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Installation on icub-head installing manually each package

The icub-head (also known as pc104 on older iCubs) is a Linux system, so the installation procedure follows the one described in the installation for Linux systems.

The main difference is that in addition you need to enable certain flags in CMake that enable compilation of specific software modules.

We recap the list of software modules before going to the installation instructions.

List of modules

The list of modules depends on the version of the robot you have.

These are modules that are common to all robots:

  • serial and serialport: face expressions
  • xsensmtx: inertial sensor
  • dragonfly2: firewire cameras
  • portaudio: microphones
  • skinWrapper

CAN based robots:

  • sharedcan
  • canmotioncontrol: communication with the can bus
  • canBusAnalogSensor
  • canBusDoubleFTSensor
  • canBusInertialMTB
  • canBusSkin
  • canBusVirtualAnalogSensor

CAN subdevices to enable depending on the version of the robot:

  • pcan: plx can interface (iCub 1.0 and 1.1.0)
  • ecan: esd can interface (iCub 1.1.0)
  • cfw2can: cfw2 can interface (iCub 1.1.1 and later versions)
  • skinprototype: if skin parts (palm, forearm, arm) are present on the robot (iCub versions 1.2 and later)

ETH based robots: In addition to can devices also enable the following ones

  • embObjStrain
  • embObjMais
  • embObjInertials
  • embObjMotionControl
  • embObjSkin
  • embObjVirtualAnalogSensor

Calibrators:

  • parametricCalibrator (CAN version)
  • parametricCalibratorEth (ETH version, EMS boards)

Cartesian controllers:

  • cartesiancontrollerclient
  • cartesiancontrollerserver

Prepare your system

This page only covers the software installation on the icub-head. To prepare the operating system for the icub-head system, please refer to Section on iCub Operating Systems.

Getting YARP, iCub sources and Robots configurations

Depending on your configuration, you may already have the required source code git repositories cloned in these directories:

/usr/local/src/robot/ycm
/usr/local/src/robot/yarp
/usr/local/src/robot/icub-main
/usr/local/src/robot/icub-firmware-shared
/usr/local/src/robot/icub-contrib-common
/usr/local/src/robot/robots-configuration

If for some reasons you do not have these directories you have to download the repositories from git:

cd /usr/local/src/robot
git clone https://github.com/robotology/ycm.git
git clone https://github.com/robotology/yarp.git
git clone https://github.com/robotology/icub-main.git
git clone https://github.com/robotology/icub-firmware-shared.git
git clone https://github.com/robotology/icub-contrib-common.git
git clone https://github.com/robotology/robots-configuration.git

Importantly, the software release of each of the above repositories shall match the YARP dependencies as per the Software Versioning Table.

Do not change the location of the repositories because the icub environment on the icub-head is already configured by assuming the above directories.

Compile YCM

mkdir -p $YCM_DIR
cd $YCM_DIR
ccmake $YCM_SOURCE_DIR
make

Do not run make install, the current instructions assume that the binaries are not installed in system directories.

Compile YARP

Create the $YARP_DIR directory:

mkdir $YARP_DIR
cd $YARP_DIR

Clean the cache and generate makefiles: 

rm CMakeCache.txt
ccmake $YARP_SOURCE_DIR

Do not forget to enable optimization, this will improve performances a lot. In CMake for both YARP and icub-main set:

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE: Release
CREATE_LIB_MATH, set to ON
CREATE_DEVICE_LIBRARY_MODULES:ON`

Configure (hit c):

Now enable:

ENABLE_yarpmod_serial
ENABLE_yarpmod_serialport
ENABLE_yarpmod_portaudio

Configure and generate makefiles.

Compile YARP:

make

Do not run make install, the current instructions assume that the binaries are not installed in system directories.

To verify the procedure type:

yarpdev --list

among the others the list should contains also the new devices:

Device "serial", C++ class ServerInertial, is a network wrapper,
Device "serialport", C++ class SerialDeviceDriver, wrapped by "serial"
Device "portaudio", C++ class ...

Compile icub-firmware-shared

Create $icub_firmware_shared_DIR if it does not exist:

mkdir $icub_firmware_shared_DIR

Clean cache and generate makefiles: 

cd $icub_firmware_shared_DIR
rm CMakeCache.txt
ccmake $icub_firmware_shared_SOURCE_DIR

Hit c to configure.

Hit g to generate.

Compile:

make

Compile iCub

Create $ICUB_DIR if it does not exist:

mkdir $ICUB_DIR

Clean cache and generate makefiles: 

cd $ICUB_DIR
rm CMakeCache.txt
ccmake $ICUB_SOURCE_DIR

The following options are as usual: 

CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:Release`

Hit c to configure. A long list of devices (in the form of ENABLE_icubmod_*) will appear.

You need to enable (all versions of iCub): 

ENABLE_icubmod_dragonfly2
ENABLE_icubmod_skinWrapper
ENABLE_icubmod_xsensmtx

CAN robots: 

ENABLE_icubmod_sharedcan
ENABLE_icubmod_canmotioncontrol
ENABLE_icubmod_canBusAnalogSensor
ENABLE_icubmod_canBusDoubleFTSensor
ENABLE_icubmod_canBusSkin
ENABLE_icubmod_canBusInertialMTB
ENABLE_icubmod_canBusVirtualAnalogSensor
ENABLE_icubmod_cfw2can
ENABLE_icubmod_parametricCalibrator

ETH robots: enable also the following 

ENABLE_icubmod_embObjAnalogSensor
ENABLE_icubmod_embObjMotionControl
ENABLE_icubmod_embObjSkin
ENABLE_icubmod_embObjVirtualAnalogSensor
ENABLE_icubmod_parametricCalibratorEth

Cartesian controller:

ENABLE_icubmod_cartesiancontrollerclient
ENABLE_icubmod_cartesiancontrollerserver

Versions from iCub 1.1.1 enable also:

ENABLE_icubmod_cfw2can
ENABLE_icubmod_skinprototype

Previous versions (iCub 1.0 and 1.1.0):

ENABLE_icubmod_pcan: iCub 1.0 and 1.1.0
ENABLE_icubmod_ecan: iCub 1.1.0

CMake will generate make files. Possible errors:

  • pcan/ecan fails to detect API(s): check that you have unpacked plxCanApi/esdCanApi in /usr/local/src/robot/drivers. cmake uses the environment variables PLXCANAPI_DIR/ESDCANAPI_DIR to locate these libraries. If you the pc104 has a Debian Live image >= 1.4 these should be already set, otherwise you have to do it manually.

compile:

make

DO NOT run make install, the current instructions assume that the binaries are not installed in system directories.

To verify the procedure type:

yarpdev --list

among the others the list should contains also the selected devices like:

Device "dragonfly2", C++ class DragonflyDeviceDriver2, wrapped by "grabber"
Device "pcan", C++ class PlxCan, has no network wrapper
...

Configuring your Robot

First off, prepare the contributing helpers:

cd $ROBOT_CODE/icub-contrib-common
mkdir build && cd build
ccmake ../

Make sure that CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX points to $ICUBContrib_DIR and finally do:

make install

Further documentation is available in icub-contrib-common documentation.

Then, proceed installing your robot configuration files:

cd $ROBOT_CODE/robots-configuration
mkdir build && cd build
ccmake ../
make install

In case you want to tune/modify any robot parameters, remember to create first your local copies:

yarp-config robot --import $YARP_ROBOT_NAME

Now you should have editable copies in 

~/.local/share/yarp/robots/$YARP_ROBOT_NAME

Further documentation is available in robots-configuration repository.