Robot Operating System (ROS)

A guide to setting up ROS for use with AutoNav. This guide is current as of spring 2025.

Prerequisites

Required Sofware

To use ROS, you need to either dual-boot Ubuntu 24.04 or download Windows Subsystem For Linux (WSL). If you have a Mac, you can get away without dual-booting but it will be difficult. See the guide to using Docker for help.

Dual Booting

A good dual-booting guide can be found here. It is important you install Ubuntu 24.04. You do not need to use a desktop environment, but if you want to run the simulator it is recommended you pick a desktop installation.

WSL

Windows Subsystem-for-Linux (WSL) is a linux kernel running in Windows. It's not quite a virtual machine, and has access to the windows filesystem. It cannot run Linux desktop applications, though you can open some windows from it (for instance you can run a Python script that opens a Pygame or OpenCV or Matplotlib window). WSL is a good choice for Windows users because you can use your Windows VSCode installation and run the simulator without having to download duplicate applications across operating systems.

Mac

Follow the Docker container guide to get setup here.

Once you have finished installing all required software, move on to the actual installation guide

Installation

The full ROS guide can be found here. It is important you install ROS Jazzy Jalisco for AutoNav 2025. Always make sure the documentation pages you read say Jazzy on them.

If you are only interested in ROS for use with SCR, then you can follow the abbreviated instructions below:

Install Guide

Open a terminal (either in WSL or just a regular terminal if you're dual-booting) and run the following commands:

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
export ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/latest | grep -F "tag_name" | awk -F\" '{print $4}')
curl -L -o /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb "https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/ros-apt-source/releases/download/${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}/ros2-apt-source_${ROS_APT_SOURCE_VERSION}.$(. /etc/os-release && echo $VERSION_CODENAME)_all.deb"
sudo dpkg -i /tmp/ros2-apt-source.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install ros-jazzy-ros-base

If you are dual booting you can install ros-jazzy-desktop instead for access to the graphical ROS tools.

Sourcing

To use ROS commands, you will need to add the following line to your ~/.bashrc file (if .bashrc doens't exist you can make it):

source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash