Effortless ROS Workshop Setup with Virtual Machines

Pre-configure once, distribute to everyone

TLDR; Install ROS in a VM, export it as an OVA file, and distribute it to attendees. Setup takes less than 10 minutes on their end.

I recently had to conduct a workshop on ROS + MoveIt with a tight time constraint of one hour. By pre-configuring a virtual machine, participants can skip all the setup friction and jump straight into the content.

Procedure

  1. Choose a lightweight distro. I used Lubuntu.
  2. 9 GB of virtual disk space is sufficient for Lubuntu + ROS + MoveIt + Jupyter Notebook.
  3. Do a minimal install in the VM — skip third-party drivers.
  4. Install VirtualBox Guest Additions from the apt repository.
  5. (Optional) Remove Bluetooth and other unneeded packages to keep the image small.
  6. Install ROS.
  7. Configure the workspace and environment variables.
  8. Install ZSH with autosuggestions — participants will thank you.
  9. Make sure all workshop files are present in the VM.
  10. Export the VM as an OVA file.
  11. Share it with your participants.