Virtual Machine with ROS Hydro Medusa Pre-Installed

It’s now our tradition to issue virtual machines with ROS pre-installed. We have already done it for ROS Fuerte and for ROS Groovy. Today it is ROS Hydro’s turn. We have chosen to stick with Ubunutu 12.04. (Precise). This is because 12.04 is an LTS version, which means Long-Term Support. The Ubuntu community will be maintaining it for 5 years.

The ROS Hydro virtual machine comes in a single file .ova of approx. 3.7GB. You can launch it using VirtualBox, the very same way as for previous ROS virtualizations. The .ova file complies with the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), thus it can be used with other virtualization tools.

We set Unbuntu to automatically log in the unique admin user:

  • login: viki
  • password: viki

The login is a reference to the V.I.K.I character from the I, Robot movie. It stands for Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence, which is the AI that controls the building of the international robot company: United States Robots (U.S.R). To remain compatible with our tutorial on ROS networking, we have named of the machine C3PO after the humanoid robot from Star Wars (BTW Episode VII is expected for December 18, 2015).

33 Comments

  • Thanks for the image – it saved me lots of hours. However, I get the following when I try to open the file on my machine:

    Failed to import appliance /home/adam/Downloads/ROSHydro.ova.

    Internal inconsistency looking up disk image ‘vmdisk2’.

    Result Code: NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)
    Component: Appliance
    Interface: IAppliance {3059cf9e-25c7-4f0b-9fa5-3c42e441670b}

    Has anyone else had this issue? I am on Ubuntu 12.04 and VBox 4.1.12

    Reply
    • Please try with the latest release of VirtualBox. 4.3.12 solved this problem for me.

      Reply
  • I am totaly new in ROS field. I installed this package and I run turtlesim example. It works fine.

    Reply
  • Great, thanks a lot!

    But one question, can you maybe list out some of the major ‘setbacks’ of running ROS on VM? ie maybe limited use of rviz n gazebo?

    Reply
  • it doesn’t download ROSHydro.ova automatically. what is the exact link for the file?

    Reply
    • Then you probably try to save the image to a FAT32 partition. Make sure you save it to an NTFS or ext3/4 partition.

      Reply
      • Actually, there were a problem with the server. This problem should not occur anymore. Many people had downloaded successfully the virtual machine since then.

        Reply
  • hi, i installed this and ran the turtlesim tutorial just fine, but i’m trying to make a pr2. i’ve found all kinds of other packages that look like they might have something to do with it, but it says E: “unable to locate package (package name)” when I try to download anything. Anyone know how to install new stuff or if this comes with moveit and pr2 simulator built in?

    Reply
  • If you provide all three ova files through torrent or other file sharing website, it would be better since currently download speed is too slow, takes almost 10~12 hours for 3.7gb file.

    Reply
  • impossible to download the file entirely.
    I tried on two computers (Mac OSX 10.9) and two differents places and with Safari and firefox.

    The problem is “Download time out”. I can download about 2.5 go each time before the connexion cut the link. Could you extend the download time allowed before to stop the connexion ?

    Reply
  • the new download link doesn’t work for me… the link is valid but the download rate is 0. Is there a known issue with it?

    Reply
  • Downloads last month exceeded our upper bandwidth limit. The cloud storage solution that we have been using since then is not satisfactory at all. We are actively working on a more reliable long term solution that will hopefully bee ready very soon. Our goal is to continue providing free download.

    Reply
    • Thanks for setting that up! I had a lot of trouble with the download. It failed half a dozen times with me at different locations – but the torrent worked!

      Reply
  • I’m having problems when trying to open Gazebo. It worked once, but since that time it only crashes when I start it. Please, can somebody provide a solution for this issue? Thanks in advance.

    Reply
  • Im new in Ros, ive dowunloaded and instaled ROS Hydro virtual machine file .ova, but dont know how to start it in the terminal. Any help. Thanks

    Reply
  • Looks like Gazebo works, but only without 3D acceleration, which makes it run pretty damn slowly. Has anyone successfully run Gazebo with 3D acceleration using this image?

    Reply
    • I have not, and I try to run the VM on a Mac. Did anyone figure out a way to make it work with 3d acceleration?

      Reply
      • You can do it through the VM settings. But, you need to ensure that the VM is off to be able to change it.

        Reply
  • Also, I’ve been getting problems because this is a 32-bit Linux install instead of a 64-bit linux install. Any chance you can release a 64-bit version as well? Thanks!

    Reply
    • Yes, we plan a 64-bit version of our ROS VM. It will be released soon :-)

      Reply
  • Thanks a lot, It work fine. Now, I’m working with a Parrot ARdrone and all is good, too easy for install new software with catkin.

    But I have a question. There are some way to get it on ISO format, to install in a pc.

    Greetings.

    Reply

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