Installation

Hint

The Franka MATLAB Toolbox is based on the Franka Control Interface (FCI) and the libfranka C++ interface. All the same system and network requirements do therefore apply.

Linux System Setup

Important

For Linux system we higly recommend installing the matlab-support package:

sudo apt install matlab-support

Make sure that the following dependencies are installed:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake git libpoco-dev libeigen3-dev

You can either let the Franka MATLAB Toolbox auto-install the libfranka locally or you can proceed with a system-wide libfranka.*.deb installation. We recommend the former.

Important

Make sure that the Real-Time Kernel is properly installed as described in the libfranka documentation.

Windows System Setup

Warning

Support for Windows is still experimental. Issues could arise due to lack of hard Real-Time scheduling capabilities of the generic Windows distributions.

Please make sure first to install the Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition (English Version) on a Windows 10 PC.

Additionally the following software components must be installed for windows:

  • git

  • cmake

  • vcpkg

  • ninja

Make sure that the vcpkg & ninja paths are exposed through the PATH environment variable. You can modify the PATH environment variable in Windows 10:

  1. Open the Start Search, type in “env”, and choose “Edit the system environment variables”.

  2. Click the “Environment Variables” button.

  3. Under the “System Variables” section, find the row with “Path” in the first column, and click edit.

  4. Add the vcpkg & ninja paths, like e.g C:\Users\{user name}\vcpkg & C:\Users\{user name}\ninja

  5. Verify by opening a terminal and evaluating the vcpkg and ninja commands.

You can then install the 64bit versions of eigen3 and poco packages:

vcpkg install eigen3:x64-windows
vcpkg install poco[netssl]:x64-windows

Franka MATLAB Toolbox Add-On Installation & License Management

For installing the Franka MATLAB Toolbox either drag-and-drop the franka_matlab.mltbx to the current Matlab Command Window or you can use the Matlab Add-On manager.

After this process is complete simply follow the instructions in the Getting Started guided which should have been opened after the Franka MATLAB Toolbox Add-on installation.

In short you will need to generate a unique identifier for you PC by executing:

franka_matlab_toolbox_uid_gen();

Please then send this unique identifier to Franka Robotics for receiving a License Number for the Franka MATLAB Toolbox.

You can then proceed with the final installation step, by executing:

franka_matlab_toolbox_install('franka matlab toolbox license number as a string',['fr3' or 'fer']);

That’s it the Franka MATLAB Toolbox should be ready.

Get a glimpse of what the capabilities of the Toolbox are by navigating through the examples provided with the Toolbox:

franka_matlab_toolbox_examples();