Bringup ROS in your system.
Most of you are new to ROS but luckily you have access to a book that starts from the very basics and the associated video series by the same author.
The setup can be somewhat involved or seamless depending on your platform. We provide instructions for the following platforms although we can only test the native Ubuntu platform. Please note that the book does the installation using a VM. Please avoid going down that path especially when a docker-based development is feasible.
Ubuntu and MAC Users
Install docker in your system and the VSCode docker and remote extensions.
Tip
Although we havent tested the assignment on MAC, it should work and there is a lot of evidence out there that it does.
Windows users
Install WSL2.
Ensure that you also follow this tutorial to setup VSCode properly aka the VSCode can access the WSL2 filesystem and work with the remote docker containers.
If you have an NVIDIA GPU in your system, ensure you have enabled it.
Launch the ROS application/project
Clone the course repo here.
In most instances you need to just follow the README instructions and do a
docker compose buildfollowed bydocker compose upto bring up the containers.
Note
The course docker container has been borrowed from another repository and some of the docker compose instruction in the README refer to the name of the original repository. Simply change the name to the name of the course repository.
If you find the docker based environment setup challenging you can install ROS2 straight into a ubuntu shelll prompt (native or WSL2). Having said that, you need to be careful which version of ROS you install as there is a mapping between ROS and the version of the Ubuntu OS. Humble goes with Ubuntu 22.04 and Jazzy with Ubuntu 24.04. Note also the MAC users should not attempt to install ROS2 without docker - it does not work. Report any issues in the relevant class Discord thread.