See the docs for more details. Below there are listed all the needed command to install ROS2 humble.
Setup locale
sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
Verify settings with locale command
Setup resources and repositories
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null
Install of ROS2 packages
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop
Configure the environment
echo "source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
printenv | grep -i ROS
Check that:
ROS_VERSION=2
ROS_PYTHON_VERSION=3
ROS_DISTRO=humble
Finally, export the following two variables
echo "export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=0" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY=1" >> ~/.bashrc
See the docs for more details. Below there are the steps to follow in order to correctly install PX4 and its dependencies.
Install the development environment for Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Clone the repository of PX4 in any folder
git clone https://github.com/links-cosero/PX4-Autopilot.git --recursive
bash ./PX4-Autopilot/Tools/setup/ubuntu.sh
Finally, run the following command to lanch the simulation.
make px4_sitl gz_x500
See the docs for more details. Below are the steps to install the bridge.
PX4 communicates with MicroXRCEAgent, that is a middleware executed on the offboard computer. XRCEAgent communicate with PX4 with a UPD port and then transforms the uORB messages in suitable ROS2 topics.
Install needed python packages
sudo pip3 install -U empy pyros-genmsg setuptools
Clone the repository and build the source code. Clone the repository in any folder (outside PX4 folder)
git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Micro-XRCE-DDS-Agent.git
cd Micro-XRCE-DDS-Agent
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig /usr/local/lib/
To see if everything until now installed correctly follow the below steps in order to run a quick test.
In one terminal, start the px4 simulation.
cd PX4_Autopilot
make px4_sitl gz_x500
In another terminal, source the ROS2 workspace and start the agent
MicroXRCEAgent udp4 -p 8888
You can see that the communication between client and agent started when both terminals published new messages highliting new subscribers and publishers. Moreover with:
ros2 topic list
All the topics created are listed.
Additionaly the last step is to install the QGroundControl GCS app.
Enter the following commands to install properly the program.
sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
sudo apt-get remove modemmanager -y
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-gl -y
sudo apt install libqt5gui5 -y
sudo apt install libfuse2 -y
chmod +x ./QGroundControl.AppImage
All the programs, packages and their dependencies are now fully installed. You can proceed to the following steps in order to setup and launch the simulation demo.
All the necessary steps are done and now the simulation setup is completed. Next, we can move to the config of the workspace in which multiple scripts are built in order to command the drone in Offboard Mode. See Offboard control example for details on the implementation.