The following section provides step-by-step instructions to install and configure VulcanAI.

• Python 3.10 or higher

It is recommended to create a virtual environment before installing VulcanAI to avoid potential conflicts with other Python packages.

To create a virtual environment, run the following command:

python3 -m venv vulcanai_venv && \
source vulcanai_venv/bin/activate

If venv or pip are not installed in your system, you can install them using your package manager with the following commands:

sudo apt update && \
sudo apt install python3-venv python3-pip

The fastest and simplest way to install VulcanAI is using pip. To do so, open a terminal and run the following command:

pip install eprosima-vulcanai

This will install the latest stable version of VulcanAI and all its dependencies.

If you prefer to install VulcanAI from source, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository in the desired location and navigate to it:

git clone https://github.com/eProsima/VulcanAI.git VulcanAI && cd VulcanAI

2. Install VulcanAI:

python3 -m pip install .

To check the installation, you can run the following command to see if pip is able to list the package:

pip show eprosima-vulcanai

Virtual environments have their own Python path, so Vulcanexus ROS packages will not be found when running VulcanAI from the virtual environment. This section explains how to properly fix this to configure the environment to run VulcanAI with Vulcanexus.

To run VulcanAI with Vulcanexus, you need to have a Vulcanexus distribution installed in your system. You can follow the official Vulcanexus installation guide for binaries or docker

Once you have a Vulcanexus distribution installed and a virtual environment for VulcanAI created, you need to append the VulcanAI virtual environment’s Python path to the PYTHONPATH environment variable. In this way, both Vulcanexus and VulcanAI will be able to find the required Python packages.

To do so, source Vulcanexus and then run the following command in the terminal where you want to run VulcanAI:

source /opt/vulcanexus/${VULCANEXUS_DISTRO}/setup.bash && \
export PYTHONPATH='/<path/to/vulcanai_venv>/lib/python3.x/site-packages':$PYTHONPATH