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Install ROS Packages and Dependencies for ROS

Universal Robots provides set of external ROS packages to communicate and control robot manipulators. More information on the individual packages can be found on this GitHub Page.

Execute the following steps sequentially to clone required packages and install required dependencies. Open a new terminal in Linux® host machine with ROS and execute the following steps.

  1. Create a new workspace with src folder. This command will make a new catkin folder ur_ws inside the home directory.

    mkdir -p ~/ur_ws/src 
    cd ~/ur_ws
  2. Install git by executing the following command:

    sudo apt install git -y
  3. Download the ROS driver packages by executing the following command in the Linux terminal.

    git clone https://github.com/UniversalRobots/Universal_Robots_ROS_Driver.git src/Universal_Robots_ROS_Driver
  4. Download the Gazebo simulation related packages by executing the following command in the Linux terminal.

    git clone -b calibration_devel https://github.com/fmauch/universal_robot.git src/fmauch_universal_robot
  5. Install dependencies from the custom ROS packages by executing the following commands in the Linux terminal.

    sudo apt update -qq 
    rosdep update 
    rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y 
  6. Build the workspace using catkin tool. This will take a few minutes to complete.

    catkin_make
  7. Once the build is successful, continue with the hardware setup screens.