Webots User Guide - chapter 1 - section 2

Webots User Guide


1.2 Installation procedure

Usually, you will need to be "administrator" to install Webots. Once installed, Webots can be used by a regular, unprivileged user. To install Webots, please follow this procedure:

  1. Uninstall completely any old version of Webots that may have been installed on your computer previously.

  2. Install the evaluation version of Webots for your operating system as explained below.

  3. Setup your Webots USB dongle according the instructions described in the next section.

The evaluation version will become an EDU or PRO version after installing the dongle. After installation, the most important Webots features will be available, but some third party tools (such as Java, Python, or MATLABTM) may be necessary for running or compiling specific projects. The chapter 4 covers the set up of these tools.

1.2.1 Linux

Webots will run on most recent Linux distributions running glibc2.3. This includes fairly recent Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SuSE, RedHat, etc. Webots comes in two different package types: .tar.bz2 (tarball) or .deb which are suitable for most Linux systems. These package are located on the Webots DVD in the linux/webots folder, or can be downloaded from our web site. Please select among the following ways to install Webots.

Some of the following commands requires the root privileges. You can get these privileges by preceding all the commands by the sudo command.
Webots will run much faster if you install an accelerated OpenGL drivers. If you have a nVidia or ATI graphics card, it is highly recommended that you install the Linux graphics drivers from these manufacturers to take the full advantage of the OpenGL hardware acceleration with Webots. Please find instructions here section 1.4.
Webots needs the mencoder Linux package to create MPEG-4 movies. You should install it if you want to create MPEG-4 movies of your simulations.

Using Advanced Packaging Tool (APT)

The advantage of this solution is that Webots will be updated with the system updates. This installation requires the root privileges.

First of all, you may want to configure your apt package manager by adding this line:

deb http://www.cyberbotics.com/debian/ binary-i386/

or

deb http://www.cyberbotics.com/debian/ binary-amd64/

in the /etc/apt/sources.list configuration file. Then update the APT packages by using

apt-get update

Optionally, Webots can be autentified thanks to the Cyberbotics.asc signature file which can be downloaded here, using this command:

apt-key add /path/to/Cyberbotics.asc

Then proceed to the installation of Webots using:

apt-get install webots

This procedure can also be done using any APT front-end tool such as the Synaptic Package Manager. But only a command line procedure is documented here.

From the tarball package

This procedure explains how to install Webots from the tarball package (having the .tar.bz2 extension). The tarball package can be installed without the root privileges. It can be uncompressed anywhere using the tar xjf command line. Once uncompressed, it is recommended to set the WEBOTS_HOME environment variable to point to the webots directory obtained from the uncompression of the tarball:

tar xjf webots-7.0.2-i386.tar.bz2

or

tar xjf webots-7.0.2-x86-64.tar.bz2

and

export WEBOTS_HOME=/home/username/webots

The export line should however be included in a configuration script like /etc/profile, so that it is set properly for every session.

Some additional libraries are needed in order to properly run Webots. In particular libjpeg62 and mencoder have to be installed on the system.

From the DEB package

This procedure explains how to install Webots from the DEB package (having the .deb extension). This can be done using dpkg with the root privileges:

dpkg -i webots_7.0.2_i386.deb

or

dpkg -i webots_7.0.2_amd64.deb

1.2.2 Windows 7, Vista, XP

  1. Uninstall any previous release of Webots from the Start menu, Control Panel, Add / Remove Programs. You may also use the Start menu, Cyberbotics, Uninstall Webots.

  2. Get the webots-7.0.2_setup.exe installation file either from the Webots DVD (in the windows/webots folder) or from our web site.

  3. Double click on this file.

  4. Follow the installation instructions.

If you observe 3D rendering anomalies or Webots crashes, it is strongly recommend to upgrade your graphics driver. The safest way to update drivers is to uninstall the current drivers, reboot into VGA mode, install the new drivers, and reboot again.

1.2.3 Mac OS X

  1. Get the webots-7.0.2.dmg installation file from the Webots DVD (in the mac/webots folder).

  2. Double click on this file. This will mount on the desktop a volume named Webots containing the Webots folder.

  3. Move this folder to your /Applications folder or wherever you would like to install Webots.

To play back the MPEG-4 movies generated by Webots, you will need to install either the VLC application or the Flip4Mac WMV component for QuickTime. Both are freely available from the Internet.
release 7.0.2
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