Superbuild installation on icub-head

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.

Prepare your system

Warning: if your iCub robot is not currently using the robotology-superbuild, do not attempt to migrate it without coordinating with the iCub support. For any doubt, please open an issue at robotology/icub-tech-support.

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 robotology-superbuild

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

/usr/local/src/robot/robotology-superbuild

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/robotology-superbuild.git
cd robotology-superbuild
git checkout v<YYYY.MM>

Importantly, you should use a given release, see Software Versioning Table for more info.

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 robotology-superbuild

cd /usr/local/src/robot/robotology-superbuild
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DROBOTOLOGY_USES_GAZEBO:BOOL=OFF -DROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_ICUB_HEAD:BOOL=ON ..
make

The main difference over the standard installation of the robotology-superbuild, is that the ROBOTOLOGY_USES_GAZEBO option is disabled (as the Gazebo is tipically not installed in the icub-head/pc104 machine) and the ROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_ICUB_HEAD option is enabled, to enable all the YARP devices that are necessary to interface with the internal communication bus of the iCub robot. The make command in this case will download, compile and install all the software necessary to run the robot itself.

If you need to use other superbuild profiles, they can be easily enabled with the corresponding CMake option.

Important: do not run make install for the superbuild: the superbuild already installs all the software in /usr/local/src/robot/robotology-superbuild/build/install, and installing the software elsewhere on the robot is not currently supported.

Important: If you are using an old iCub that still uses the CAN internal bus, you also need to enable the ROBOTOLOGY_USES_CFW2CAN CMake option. Note that in this case the .bashrc_iCub file should also contain the definition of the CFW2CANAPI_DIR environmental variables, in addition to all the environmental variable already defined in that file. Refer to the robotology-superbuild documentation for more detailed information.

After the compilation finished, you can check that the compilation ended correctly by opening a new terminal and executing:

yarpdev --list

The command should work correctly, and among the others the list should contain several devices:

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

Configuring your Robot

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.