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Install

Disclaimer

WBT has been widely tested on Ubuntu 16:04 and Ubuntu 18.04 with Matlab R2017b. If you face any issue either with your OS or Matlab version, please submit an Issue.

Requirements

Development requirements

Optional requirements

Installation

For a simplified installation procedure, jump to Install using the robotology-superbuild.

Dependencies

Install the required and the optional dependencies by following their installation instructions. These instructions need that blockfactory, YARP, iDynTree, YCM and Eigen3 packages can be found by CMake using find_package.

Warning

If an optional dependency is not found, the classes depending on it are not compiled. However, in the Simulink Library the blocks do not disappear. They will just not work, raising an appropriate error.

Setup Matlab

Matlab and Simulink are not required to build the WBT plugin. However, through blockfactory the plugin library shipped in this repository can be loaded inside a Simulink model. WBT provides a Simulink Library that exposes all the C++ blocks of the plugin to Simulink, wrapping them in user-friendly masks.

Info

Despite the blocks can be used directly from C++, this usage is not very user friendly. Simulink and alternative visual tools are very convenient solutions to connect blocks together, but nothing prevents using the provided blocks exploiting the blockfactory interfaces. From now on, we assume that you want to use Simulink since it is the most common use case.

For developers

Developers of WBT must have Simulink installed in order to operate on the provided Simulink Library.

Make sure that CMake is able to find your Matlab installation, or manually set the Matlab_ROOT_DIR environment variable if needed.

Download, build and install

If all the dependencies are met, proceed with the following instructions:

Commands

Substitute to <install-prefix> the absolute path where you want to install the project.

````tab="GNU / Linux and macOS" git clone robotology/wb-toolbox.git mkdir -p wb-toolbox/build && cd wb-toolbox/build cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= cmake --build . cmake --build . --target install 

````tab="Windows"
git clone https://github.com/robotology/wb-toolbox.git
mkdir -p wb-toolbox/build && cd wb-toolbox/build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<install-prefix>
cmake --build . --config Release
cmake --build . --config Release --target install

Configuration

Plugin

In order to use Whole-Body Toolbox, the dynamic loader of the operating system should be able to find the plugin library. Add the folder <install-prefix>/lib/blockfactory to the following environment variable depending on the OS:

GNU / Linux macOS Windows
LD_LIBRARY_PATH DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH Path

Matlab

In order to use the WBT in Matlab you have to add some folders to the Matlab path.

If you usually launch Matlab from the command line, exporting the following environment variable should be enough:

export MATLABPATH=<install-prefix>/mex:<install-prefix>/share/WBToolbox:<install-prefix>/share/WBToolbox/images

If, instead, you use the desktop launcher, a non-persistent Matlab configuration is the following:

addpath(['<install-prefix>' /mex])
addpath(genpath(['<install-prefix>' /share/WBToolbox]))

We also provide for the latter scenario a persistent configuration of WBT. After the installation, run once the startup_wbitoolbox.m script that you can find in the <install-prefix>/share/WBToolbox directory. It will place a file pathdef.m in your userpath that loads the right variables to Matlab's environment. Note that this usage assumes that Matlab is always launched from the userpath folder.

Environment

Each robot that can be used with WBT has its own configuration files. WBT uses the YARP's ResourceFinder for finding files in the file system. You should thus follow the related instructions to properly configure your installation (e.g. setting the YARP_DATA_DIRS and YARP_ROBOT_NAME variables).

Install using the robotology-superbuild

The robotology/robotology-superbuild provides an easy way for users to setup an environment by downloading, compiling, installing all the projects together.

Follow the superbuild installation instructions and enable the ROBOTOLOGY_ENABLE_DYNAMICS profile. If WBT is not downloaded and built, check that ROBOTOLOGY_USES_MATLAB is ON and ROBOTOLOGY_NOT_USE_SIMULINK is OFF.

The configuration of the environment should be straightforward following the Configure your environment and Matlab sections.