URSim On Linux

Installing the Universal Robots simulator software on Ubuntu linux version 10.04

Introduction

This mini guide explains how to install the Universal Robots software (GUI and controller) on Ubuntu linux version 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).

With this software installed it is possible to create and run programs on a simulated robot, with some limitations. The most important of these limitations is that it is not possible to simulate digital/analogue input to the robot. Furthermore touch screen set-up and network set-up from within the GUI won't work. The robot is able to communicate via TCP/IP, if this is configured on the host machine.

The installation procedure described in this document is tested in Ubuntu Linux 10.04 LTS 32 bit. But is should be possible to install on other Linux distributions as well. The basic prerequisites for the software is a recent Java runtime environment (SUN) and python 2.6.

Installing prerequisites

The Universal Robots software needs a Java runtime environment in order to work.

If Java is not already installed, open up a terminal and follow the procedure below to install it.

First in order to install the sun Java runtime environment on Ubuntu 10.04, we need to enable the partner repository. To do this enter the following in a terminal and supply your password when asked:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"

Then update the list of available packages:

sudo apt-get update

Finally, install the required packages (remember to accept the licence agreement):

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

Install the software

Note: The installation script will impact certain packages on your host system. Before proceeding with the installation using the script, make sure you are aware of the possible implications for packages already installed on your host system. Detailed information can be found here.

First download the software here and save it to your home folder. Change to your home folder and extract the file to the root of your home folder:

cd ~
tar xvzf [FILE NAME]

Now you can simply run the software from the terminal by running:

ursim-1.8/start-ursim.sh

Or if your prefer, you can run the installation script to have a short-cut created on your desktop:

cd ursim-1.8
./install.sh

Enable Modbus server in URSim

Open the file start-ursim.sh located in the installation folder using a file editor.

Modify this line:

${HOME}/URControl &

to:

echo password | sudo -S ${HOME}/URControl &

where password is the login password for Linux