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Connecting a Workstation and Starting the Robot

Your workstation may be a Ubuntu Linux system of your own, or you can use our preconfigured virtual machine. Read more about this here.

Using our out-of-the-box virtual machine workstation

• Download the appropriate VirtualBox software from the VirtualBox website and install it.

• Download the Ubiquity Robotics Virtual Machine and save it in VirtualBox’s folder for virtual machines. On Windows this is \Users<username>\VirtualBox VMs.

• On Windows or MacOS, unzip (decompress) the file you just downloaded. The result will be a single folder with the same name as the zip file. Inside this folder find the file with the suffix .vbox, and double-click it. This will cause VirtualBox to import the Virtual Machine (the VM) and open the VirtualBox Manager.

• Check the following parameters of the VM:

  • System/Base Memory: at least 2048 MB, why not 4096?
  • Display/Video Memory: at least 64 MB, why not 128?
  • Storage: at least 25GB
  • Network/Adapter 1: Bridged Adapter

• Start the VM. Your user ID is “ubuntu”, and the password is “ubuntu”. Your workstation is ready to use.

In a later section we will explain how to attach the robot to an existing WiFi network and how ROS can take advantage of that to control the robot.

Connecting to robot’s network

If you have received a Magni with the Raspberry Pi already installed, or loaded the default Raspberry Pi 3 image from downloads.ubiquityrobotics.com, the robot will boot up in WiFi Access Point mode. This is a WiFi mode which provides its own network to which you can connect your workstation. The SSID (network name) is ubiquityrobotXXXX where XXXX is a number letter combination. You should find it under network list; the password (sometimes called the security key) to connect is robotseverywhere. If you can’t find it under available networks, try restarting the robot.

Connecting a Virtual Machine

If you are running under VirtualBox, you will have installed this virtual machine with a bridged network. Thus, the VM will see whatever network your host system is connected to. If your workstation is running, shut it down. Then connect your host system to the ubiquityrobotXXXX network. Now start the workstation (that is, the Ubuntu system running under VBox); it will be connected to the robot’s network ubiquityrobotXXXX. The password (sometimes called the security key) to connect is robotseverywhere.

Connecting to the Robot and Logging In

Now that you are on the robot’s network, you can connect to the robot itself. On your workstation, start a terminal window (Linux shortcut: ctrl-alt-t). In that window, log in by typing

ssh ubuntu@ubiquityrobot.local

The password initially is set to “ubuntu”.

If you have trouble using ubiquityrobot.local, use the IP address, 10.42.0.1 instead. In some environments, this works better.

You may see:

The authenticity of host ‘10.42.0.1 (10.42.0.1)’ can’t be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:sDDeGZzL8FPY3kMmvhwjPC9wH+mGsAxJL/dNXpoYnsc.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Answer yes

Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts (/somepath/.ssh/known_hosts).

Ignore that. You will be asked for the password, which initially is “ubuntu”.

ubuntu@10.42.0.1's password:ubuntu

Now you are connected and logged in.

Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.38-v7+ armv7l)

• Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
• Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
• Support: https://ubuntu.com/advantage
  0 packages can be updated.
  0 updates are security updates.
  Last login: Thu Feb 11 16:30:39 2016 from 10.42.0.143

Finally, start the robot’s software by typing:

roslaunch magni_demos simple_navigation.launch

At this point you will be able to control the robot from the workstation keyboard or by using Robot Commander.