Build Soar with ROS 1¶

Soar for ROS 2

For ROS 2, a package called soar_ros is available from GitHub that includes documentation. The last ROS 1 distribution is end of life (EOL) as of May 2025.

Requirements¶

Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS Bionic THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. NO OTHER LINUX DISTRO WORKS
Relatively recent GPU YOUR COMPUTER MUST HAVE A DISPLAY
ROS Melodic ONLY MELODIC WILL WORK
Gazebo 9 MUST BE 9
Point Cloud Library version 1.8.1 Must be 1.8.1

ROS Installation (from http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu):

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver 'hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80' --recv-key C1CF6E31E6BADE8868B172B4F42ED6FBAB17C654
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-melodic-desktop-full
echo "source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Point Cloud Library should also be installed. Run sudo apt install libpcl-dev to make sure.

Download and Build Soar¶

git clone https://github.com/SoarGroup/Soar.git -b svs_overhaul
sudo apt install build-essential swig openjdk-8-jdk python-all-dev
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$SOAR_HOME:/opt/ros/melodic/lib/
export CPATH=$CPATH:/usr/include/pcl-1.8/:/opt/ros/melodic/include/
cd Soar
python2 scons/scons.py all --use-ros

If you want Python 3 support, replace step 4 with:

1	`which python3`

Copy the file path returned

python2 scons/scons.py all --use-ros --python=<insert/path/copied/above>

Recommended: If you want to use Lizzie's svs_utils ROS package to make a world with a Fetch robot, follow these steps: Install the Fetch ROS and Gazebo packages: sudo apt install ros-melodic-fetch-ros ros-melodic-fetch-gazebo Create a catkin workspace: mkdir ~/svs_utils_ws/src

cd ~/svs_utils_ws
catkin_make
cd src
git clone https://[your_username]@bitbucket.org/emgoeddel/svs_util.git (Ask Lizzie for access to the Bitbucket)
cd ..
catkin_make
echo "source ~/svs_util_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc