Setting Up Robotics SDK¶

This section describes how to set up the Robotics SDK on the TDA4 Processor SDK Linux.

1. Requirements & Dependency¶

1.1. Supported Hardware Platforms¶

Platform	Supported Devices	Supported EVMs
J721E	TDA4VM	SK-TDA4VM, J721EXSOMXEVM

1.2. Processor SDK Linux for Edge AI¶

The Robotics SDK requires the SD card image from Processor SDK Linux for Edge AI. The SD card image contains Processor SDK Linux and libraries that are necessary for setting up the Robotics SDK environment.

1.3. Ubuntu PC¶

A Ubuntu PC is required for visualization of ROS topics published from the TDA4 target. We have tested only with native x86_64 Ubuntu PCs, and have not tested with any other Ubuntu systems: including Ubuntu virtual machines and Docker Destkop on Mac or Windows.

It is assumed that matching ROS distro (either ROS 1 Melodic or ROS 2 Foxy) is installed on the remote Ubuntu PC, either directly in the host Ubuntu filesystem or in a Docker container. In case when you want to install ROS directly on the host Ubuntu filesystem:

For ROS Melodic installation steps, please refer to this ROS wiki page.
For ROS 2 Foxy installation steps, please refer to this ROS 2 documentation.

We also provide Dockefiles (docker/Dockerfile.x86_64.{melodic,foxy}) that can build and run on the remote Ubuntu PC for both ROS Melodic and ROX 2 Foxy with detailed steps for setting up Docker environment on the remote PC. For installation of Docker on the Ubuntu PC, the following links may be useful:

1.4. USB Camera¶

The Robotics SDK provides OpenCV-based ROS drivers for ZED stereo camera and USB mono cameras (Logitech C270, C920, C922). All the demo applications can be tried out with a live camera. ROS 1 demos can be launched with a ROSBAG file that is provided.

For configuration of a stereo camera, please see ros1/drivers/zed_capture/README.md.
For configuration of a USB mono camera, please see ros1/drivers/mono_capture/README.md.

../../_images/tiovx_ros_setup.svg

Figure 1. Robotics SDK Setup and Installation Steps

2. Set Up the TDA4 Target and Development Environment¶

Figure 1 shows the hardware setup and high-level installation steps on the TDA4 target and the Ubuntu PC. The target EVM and the remote Ubuntu PC are assumed to be connected through Ethernet in the same network.

2.1. Build SD Card¶

From Ubuntu PC, download the SD card image.
Flash the downloaded image to a SD card (minimum 32GB, high-performance) using Balena Etcher tool. For detailed instruction, please refer to this section.

NOTE: The etcher image is created for 16 GB SD cards, if you are using larger SD card, it is highly recommended to expand the root filesystem to use the full SD card capacity using below steps on the Ubuntu PC.

# find the SD card device entry using lsblk (Eg: /dev/sdb)
# use the following commands to expand the filesystem

umount /dev/sdX1
umount /dev/sdX2
sudo parted -s /dev/sdX resizepart 2 '100%'
sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdX2
sudo resize2fs /dev/sdX2

# replace /dev/sdX in above commands with SD card device entry

2.2. Connect Remotely to the TDA4 Target¶

To find the IP address assigned to the EVM, use a serial port communications program (for example, sudo minicom -D /dev/ttyUSBx where /dev/ttyUSBx is the device for the UART serial port), log in with root account, and run ifconfig.
From a terminal on the PC, open a SSH session to connect remotely to the TDA4/J7 target:
```
user@pc:~$ ssh root@<J7_IP_address>
```
Note: It is recommended to use a static IP for the TDA4/J7 EVM to make ROS network setting easy.
You can consider using VS Code with “remote development extension pack” for better experience, in a similar way as described in this section of Edge AI documentation

2.3. Clone the Robotics SDK Git Repository and Initial Setup¶

2.3.1 On TDA4 Target¶

You can download init_setup.sh and run the the script:

root@j7-evm:~$ wget https://git.ti.com/cgit/processor-sdk-vision/jacinto_ros_perception/plain/init_setup.sh
root@j7-evm:~$ source ./init_setup.sh v0.5.0

This script takes care of:

Setting up the folders for evaluating the Robotics SDK under $HOME/j7ros_home
Cloning the GIT repository for Robotics SDK under $HOME/j7ros_home/ros_ws/src
Downloading DL runtime libraries, ROSBAG and other data files
Downloading several DL models from the edge AI model zoo. You can also use the model downloader tool (please refer to this section for more details).

2.3.2 Remote Ubuntu PC¶

In a similar way, you can use the same script to set up on the remote Ubuntu PC for visualization:

user@pc:~$ wget https://git.ti.com/cgit/processor-sdk-vision/jacinto_ros_perception/plain/init_setup.sh
user@pc:~$ source ./init_setup.sh v0.5.0

NOTE: In a proxy network, in case the wget command above does not work, you can try again with adding --proxy off argument:

user@pc:~$ wget --proxy off https://git.ti.com/cgit/processor-sdk-vision/jacinto_ros_perception/plain/init_setup.sh

2.4. Set Up Docker Environment on TDA4 Target¶

The Robotics SDK runs in a Docker container environment on Processor SDK Linux. In the Robotics SDK Docker environment, ROS and necessary libraries and tools are installed.

First, following this link, please check that Docker and network work correctly on the TDA4 target.

The following two sections describe the Docker environment setup, details of building, and running apps under Docker, for ROS 1 and ROS 2, respectively. Please note that it will take several minutes to build the Docker image. The Docker image built can be listed with docker images.

Docker Setup for ROS 1 Melodic ¶

Docker Setup for ROS 2 Foxy ¶

NOTE

Proxy Network: If the board running the Docker container is behind a proxy server, the default settings for downloading files and installing packages via apt-get may not work. If you are running the board from TI network, docker build and run scripts will automatically detects and configures necessary proxy settings. For other cases, you may need to modify the configuration files under docker/proxy folder and to add the custom proxy settings required for your network, and relevant port of docker_build_rosX.sh and docker_run_rosX.sh

Docker in TI Network (only for TI Users): For proxy settings in TI network, you can check this page.

Docker Start: After “docker build” is completed, it is important to use docker_run_rosX.sh script to start a Docker container, since the script includes all the necessary settings to leverage all the cores and hardware accelerators of the TDA4 device. Please note that docker_run_rosX.sh includes --rm argument. Just remove --rm argument in docker_run_rosX.sh in case you want to do “docker commit” after exiting a Docker container. A short information about several useful Docker commands is provided in this link.

Switching between ROS 1 and ROS 2 Docker Containers: When the applications are built under the ROS1 container, two directories, {build, devel} are created under ros_ws directory under TDA4 host and similarly {build, install, log} directories are created when applications are built under ROS 2 container. Since the containers share the common space ros_ws on TDA4 host, these directories need to be removed if switching between ROS 1 and ROS 2 containers.