Using the MDK

In the lab

The computers in B.09 already have all the necessary software installed and configured so you can write and test code on either a physical or virtual MiRo robot. In either case, you will need to configure some environment variables to get everything working:

Variable	Physical	Virtual
ROS_IP	Your computer's local IP	Your computer's local IP
ROS_MASTER_URI	http://<MiRo's IP>:11311	http://localhost:11311
MIRO_ROBOT_NAME	The robot's ROS name	miro

You can view a physical robot's ROS name by using the Android app. The recommended way to set these variables is to edit ~/.miro2/config/user_setup.bash; check that none of them have been overridden in ~/.bashrc.

If you are using PyCharm, ensure that the system environment variables have been inherited by the IDE. If they have not, a list of all required variables you can copy and update as needed is below.

On your personal computer

We use ROS to interface with both physical and virtual MiRos and Gazebo as a simulation environment, so these are the two additional software packages you'll need to test your code on your personal machine (assuming you don't have access to a physical robot - if you do, see this page).

There are two ways to get going:

Native

A native install will allow the Gazebo simulator to run quicker and is likely to be simpler and have fewer issues overall, but because of the software dependencies it will require you to install Ubuntu 16 or an Ubuntu 16 fork such as Linux Mint 'Sylvia' as your OS.

Once you've done that, it's recommended you follow the official MiRo-E documentation for installing ROS Kinetic and Gazebo 7.

Docker

If you don't want to install Ubuntu 16 on your machine, it should be possible to run a virtualised instance of the MiRo simulator through Docker (as long as you're still running some Linux variant). Install Docker CE and then:

1. Run docker pull tacd/miro_sim to get the MiRo simulator Docker image
2. Run docker run -it --net host -v $XAUTHORITY:/root/.Xauthority -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix tacd/miro_sim to launch the Docker image

Alternatively, see the macOS installation guide for installation on that platform.