Documentation Version
You're reading the documentation for a stable version of MoveIt that is not being developed further. For information on the recommended version, please have a look at Main.
Getting Started
Here we will setup your environment for best running the tutorials. This will create a Colcon workspace, download all of the latest MoveIt source code, and build everything from source to ensure you have the latest fixes and improvements.
Building all the source code of MoveIt can take 20-30 minutes, depending on the CPU speed and available RAM of your computer. If you are on a less performant system, or generally just want to get started quicker, checkout our Docker Guide.
Install ROS 2 and Colcon
Install ROS 2 Humble. It is easy to miss steps when going through the ROS 2 installation tutorial. If you run into errors in the next few steps, a good place to start is to go back and make sure you have installed ROS 2 correctly. One that users commonly forget is to source the ROS 2 install itself.
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
Note
Unlike ROS 1 setup scripts, in ROS 2 the setup scripts do not attempt to switch what version of ROS you are using. This means that if you have previously sourced a different version of ROS, including from within your .bashrc file, you will run into errors during the building step. To fix this change what is sourced in your .bashrc and start a new terminal.
Install rosdep to install system dependencies :
sudo apt install python3-rosdep
Once you have ROS 2 installed, make sure you have the most up to date packages:
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
Install Colcon the ROS 2 build system with mixin:
sudo apt install python3-colcon-common-extensions
sudo apt install python3-colcon-mixin
colcon mixin add default https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/master/index.yaml
colcon mixin update default
Install vcstool :
sudo apt install python3-vcstool
Create A Colcon Workspace and Download Tutorials
For tutorials you will need to have a colcon workspace setup.
mkdir -p ~/ws_moveit2/src
Download Source Code of MoveIt and the Tutorials
Move into your Colcon workspace and pull the MoveIt tutorials source:
cd ~/ws_moveit2/src
git clone --branch humble https://github.com/ros-planning/moveit2_tutorials
Next we will download the source code for the rest of MoveIt:
vcs import < moveit2_tutorials/moveit2_tutorials.repos
The import command may ask for your GitHub credentials. You can just press Enter until it moves on (ignore the “Authentication failed” error).
Build your Colcon Workspace
The following will install from Debian any package dependencies not already in your workspace. This is the step that will install MoveIt and all of its dependencies:
sudo apt update && rosdep install -r --from-paths . --ignore-src --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO -y
The next command will configure your Colcon workspace:
cd ~/ws_moveit2
colcon build --mixin release
This build command will likely take a long time (20+ minutes) depending on your computer speed and amount of RAM available (we recommend 32 GB). If you are short on computer memory or generally your build is struggling to complete on your computer, you can append the argument --parallel-workers 1 to the colcon command above.
If everything goes well, you should see the message “finished”. If you have problems, try re-checking your ROS Installation.
Setup Your Colcon Workspace
Source the Colcon workspace:
source ~/ws_moveit2/install/setup.bash
Optional: add the previous command to your .bashrc:
echo 'source ~/ws_moveit2/install/setup.bash' >> ~/.bashrc
Note
Sourcing the setup.bash automatically in your ~/.bashrc is
not required and often skipped by advanced users who use more than one
Colcon workspace at a time, but we recommend it for simplicity.
Switch to Cyclone DDS
As of Sep 26, 2022, the default ROS 2 middleware (RMW) implementation has an issue. As a workaround, switch to Cyclone DDS. (Note: this makes all nodes started using this RMW incompatible with any other nodes not using Cyclone DDS.)
sudo apt install ros-humble-rmw-cyclonedds-cpp
# You may want to add this to ~/.bashrc to source it automatically
export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
Next Step
Nice job! Next we will Visualize a robot with the interactive motion planning plugin for RViz