Installation

To be able to use pitasc, make sure you meet the system requirements, then install pitasc.

System requirements

pitasc is available for the following 64-bit versions of Ubuntu:

Ubuntu Focal 20.04 (LTS)

pitasc comes in 2 flavors: 1) is based on ROS, 2) is a ROS-less version, e.g., for Reinforcement Learning applications.

For a ROS-based installation, you need to set it up first:

ROS Noetic for Ubuntu 20.04

The following hardware requirements have to be met when setting up industrial pcs for robot cells.

Hardware requirements
Component	Min	Recommended
PC	PC with disabled thermal energy saving	IPC
CPU	6th Gen i5 Intel	9th Gen i7 Intel
RAM	4 GB	16 GB
Hard disk	SSD mit minimium 32GB (SATA or NVMe)	SSD mit minimium 256GB (SATA or NVMe)
Connectivity	Ethernet Switch connecting all items	Direct ethernet connection from robot to PC
OS	Ubuntu 20.04 with admin rights	Ubuntu 20.04 with Realtime patch (included e.g. in Ubuntu Pro) and admin rights

Using the installer

To install pitasc, you need to download the installer or retrieve it from the pitasc team.

Download the installer
- From Gitlab
- Just download the lastest (first) file without rl in the name, eg. pitasc-noetic_4.1.0-r127_2024-02-05_amd64.tar.xz.
Install pitasc by extracting the archive file you just downloaded (preferably to your home folder, i.e., “~”; otherwise, adapt the following paths):

Note

The “$” sign denotes, that the following line(s) should be executed in a terminal.

$ tar --directory=$HOME -xJf ~/Downloads/pitasc-VERSION_TAG.tar.xz

Install the dependencies according to the respective subsection

ROS-based version

$ rosdep install --from-path ~/pitasc/newest -iy

Note

As noetic is EOL, you need to run rosdep update --include-eol-distros first.

ROS-less (RL) version for Ubuntu 20.04 (LTS)

$ sudo apt-get install xz-utils libyaml-cpp0.6 liborocos-kdl1.4 liburdfdom-world libcrypto++6 liburdfdom-model

Optionally, useful for some reinforcement learning or simulation code:

$ sudo apt-get install -y python3-pykdl
$ pip3 install urdf_parser_py

Post-installation steps

Setup the PITASC_FOLDER variable, depending on the pitasc-flavor you installed (Ros-based or not):

$ PITASC_FOLDER=~/pitasc

and for RL:

$ PITASC_FOLDER=~/pitasc-rl

Recommended: Configure the newly-extracted version as the current version

$ bash ${PITASC_FOLDER}/select_version.sh

Optional: Enable pitasc by default for the current user

$ echo "source ${PITASC_FOLDER}/current/setup.bash  #autosetup at pitasc install" >> $HOME/.bashrc
$ source $HOME/.bashrc

Set up a license

pitasc requires a license key to run. There are two possibilities. Your contact from the pitasc team will let you know which to use. Execute the corresponding command below in a terminal:

Machine specific license (preferred)
For a machine specific license, execute the following command and follow the instructions:
$ bash ${PITASC_FOLDER}/current/lib/pitasc/setup_license_file
Floating license (fallback, mainly for Docker containers)
To use a floating license, execute the commmand below and replace <LICENSE_SERVER_ADDRESS> with the IP address of the license server:
$ bash ${PITASC_FOLDER}/current/lib/pitasc/use_license_server <LICENSE_SERVER_ADDRESS>

Activate pitasc

If you did not enable the auto-activation of pitasc, you need to execute source ~/pitasc/current/setup.bash or source ~/pitasc-rl/current/setup.bash before the commands of pitasc.

Uninstall pitasc

Remove the pitasc installation folder in “~/pitasc/” and/or “~/pitasc-rl/”. You can delete all versions of pitasc by deleting “~/pitasc” and/or “~/pitasc-rl”.
Disable the automatic activation of pitasc:

$ echo "$(grep -v "source $HOME/pitasc/current/setup.bash  #autosetup at pitasc install" $HOME/.bashrc)" > $HOME/.bashrc
$ echo "$(grep -v "source $HOME/pitasc-rl/current/setup.bash  #autosetup at pitasc install" $HOME/.bashrc)" > $HOME/.bashrc