Flatland

Flatland is a library that allows you to create a virtual 2-D environment in which you can put and move one or more virtual sensors to get virtual range measures.

Moving the sensors into this virtual space (really a plan) you can study how to implement your SLAM or navigation algorithms.

The name Flatland is after the romance "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions" by Edwin Abbott Abbott.

This romance describes a flat world populated by geometric figures that live and act as persons.

Install

0. Install Python and Git

In order to use Flatland package and read its complete documentation you must first install Python and Git application on your operating system.

Python 3.x installation

The Flatland package requires a Python version >= 3.5

Linux users can install Python directly from their distribution packages.

Windows users can download and install Python 3.x from official site

Git installation

Windows users can follow the instruction on the official site

Linux Debian flavored users can run apt-get install git

Linux other flavours users can install it from their package manager.

1. Create a dedicated virtual environment

  python3 -m venv flatland

2. Move into the virtual environment and clone this repository

To clone a git repository you have first to move into the flatland directory and type the commands

  cd flatland
  git clone https://github.com/Saruccio/Flatland.git

This will end up in a Flatland folder to appear in your virtual environment directory.

3. Install prerequisite using pip

3.1 Activate flatland virtualenv

Move into the virtual environment and activate it

Windows

  cd flatland
  Script\activate

Linux

  cd flatland
  source bin/activate

this will ensure that all packages will be installed into the virtual environment without polluting the global (or external) Python runtime environment.

3.2 Install prerequisite

All prerequisite have been listed into the file requirements.txt lying into the Flatland directory. To install them type

   cd flatland
   pip install -r Flatland/requirements.txt

4. Build the documentation

The documentation is written using the Sphinx and you can build the last release in html format issuing following commands

cd Flatland\docs 
make html

When build completes you can read the documentation loading the file Flatland/docs/build/html/index.html in a browser.