The ARK should have already been setup by Clearpath for you. However, this information is here in case you need it. This information can also be found in the ARK User Manual (please contact Clearpath Support if you don’t have this already), but its a PDF and you can’t copy and paste from it.

Installing the ARK and its dependencies

Install LCM

LCM is the middleware that communicates with the ARK.

cd ~
sudo apt-get install -y unzip libglib2.0-dev build-essential
wget https://github.com/lcm-proj/lcm/releases/download/v1.3.1/lcm-1.3.1.zip
unzip lcm-1.3.1.zip
cd lcm-1.3.1
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ~

Setup Your Workspace

If your robot has a workspace already, you can use it and skip ahead. If not, follow the next step to create a workspace for ARK.

mkdir ~/ark_ws
cd ~/ark_ws
mkdir src
cd src
catkin_init_workspace

Clone the necessary repositories

git clone https://github.com/autonomyresearchkit/ark_bridge.git
git clone https://github.com/autonomyresearchkit/husky_cpr_ark_navigation.git

Create the ARK bridge nodes

cd ~/ark_ws/src/ark_bridge
./build_client.sh

cd ~/ark_ws
catkin_make

Establishing connection

Run the following in a terminal on the robot:

roslaunch husky_cpr_ark_navigation husky_ark_navigation.launch

You can check it is running by running the following (in a new terminal):

rostopic echo /ark_bridge/clock_echo

You should see a new timestamp about every second.

Configure ARK

You need to configure the ARK to run by using the config file in husky_cpr_ark_navigation/config. You should already have run roslaunch husky_cpr_ark_navigation husky_ark_navigation.launch in another terminal.

# Navigate to the correct folder
cd /home/administrator/ark_ws/src/husky_cpr_ark_navigation/config
rosrun ark_bridge configure_ark.py husky_ark_configuration.yaml

You should see the following output:

Starting...
Configuring ARK
Ark Configuration <Success>

If the configuration fails, try stopping the husky_cpr_ark_navigation you have running and restart it.