Installation

Disclaimer

There has not been support for Qt5 in GraspIt yet. Please check with issue #174 in the GraspIt repo for updates.

This means that if you are using Ubuntu 20.04, where support for Qt4 has been removed, you cannot use GraspIt as of yet. While it is possible to install Qt4 (see e.g. this post), the next hindrance is lacking support for the required SoQt4. If you happen to have an update on this matter, please open an issue and let me know.

Installation

You have two options on how to use the packages provided:

1. Install all required packages and compile with catkin
2. Build with cmake to use only the sub-package grasp_planning_graspit

This wiki page is going to focus on installing with ROS and catkin. If you would like to use only the sub-package grasp_planning_graspit (option #2), please refer to the instructions the wiki page about building grasp_planning_graspit with cmake.

The installation as follows was tested on Ubuntu 14.04 with ROS Indigo, Jade and Kinetic.

Step 1. Install required system packages

Following system libraries are required if you would like to use the specified packages.

• SoQt4 (ubuntu package libsoqt4-dev)
• Coin (ubuntu package libcoin80-dev)
• Qt4 (ubuntu package libqt4-dev)
• Blas and Lapack (ubuntu packages libblas-dev and liblapack-dev)
• QHull (ubuntu package libqhull-dev)
• graspit (needs to be installed from source from github.com/graspit-simulator/graspit)

For example, if you are on Ubuntu/Debian, install them with:

sudo apt-get install \
    libsoqt4-dev \
    libcoin80-dev \
    libqt4-dev \
    libblas-dev \
    liblapack-dev \
    libqhull-dev

Install graspit by following the standard cmake procedure:

git clone https://github.com/graspit-simulator/graspit.git
cd graspit
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
make install

Step 2. Install required catkin packages

The following catkin packages are required (install command instructions below):

• Standard ROS packages incl ros-<distro>-urdf (included if you installed full desktop version)
• eigen_conversions
• object_recognition_msgs
• urdf2inventor in repository urdf-tools-pkgs
• baselib_binding in repository convenience-pkgs
• roslint (only while the packages are still in beta)
• This repository itself: graspit-pkgs

If you would like to use the examples with the Jaco arm for the urdf2graspit tutorial, you will also need this repository (and the dependencies for it, check the install instructions on the wiki):

• jaco-arm-pkgs

Please follow instructions in the wiki of jaco-arm-pkgs for installation instructions. You may find the wiki page for urdf2inventor useful as well.

Install mandatory ROS dependencies

On Ubuntu/debian, you may install the ROS packages using the package manager

sudo apt-get install \
    ros-<distro>-urdf \
    ros-<distro>-eigen-conversions \
    ros-<distro>-object-recognition-msgs \
    ros-<distro>-roslint

Install urdf-tools-pkgs, convenience-pkgs and graspit-pkgs

Add the following git repositories to your catkin workspace:

cd <your-catkin-ws>/src
git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/convenience-pkgs.git
git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/urdf-tools-pkgs.git
git clone https://github.com/JenniferBuehler/graspit-pkgs.git

and optionally for the Jaco:

sudo apt-get install ros-<distro>-gazebo-ros-control
git clone git@github.com:JenniferBuehler/jaco-arm-pkgs.git

Hint: Alternatively to cloning the repositry directly into the catkin source folder, you may also clone the repositories elsewhere and then create a softlink to the main folders in your catkin source directory:

cd <your-catkin-ws>/src
ln -s <path to graspit-pkgs>

Compile

To compile, you can now use catkin_make as usual:

cd ..
catkin_make

Step 3. Setting up GraspIt!

If you want to use the original GraspIt! simulator as described in this tutorial, or if you want to load graspit world files, you will need to set up GraspIt! first.

Follow the instructions on this wiki page.

Step 4 [Optional]. Generate doxygen documentation

You can generate doxygen documentation for the following packages:

sudo apt install ros-melodic-rosdoc-lite
catkin_make grasp_planning_graspit_doc
catkin_make grasp_planning_graspit_ros_doc

the documentation will be generated in the directories:

<your-catkin-ws>/build/graspit-pkgs/<package-name>/docs/html/

When installing the packages with catkin_make install, the documentation will install into the CATKIN_PACKAGE_SHARE_DESTINATION/doc destination.