This tutorial will cover installing IKFast on a Linux docker container with a Windows host. The steps should be similar with a Linux host.
The following MoveIt tutorials give an overview of the installation process:
MoveIt 2: https://moveit.picknik.ai/humble/doc/examples/ikfast/ikfast_tutorial.html
MoveIt 1 on ROS Noetic: https://ros-planning.github.io/moveit_tutorials/doc/ikfast/ikfast_tutorial.html
Install Docker Desktop: https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
From a terminal, run the following to install the docker image:
docker pull personalrobotics/ros-openrave
https://hub.docker.com/r/personalrobotics/ros-openrave
In Docker Desktop, run the newly pulled image. Docker Desktop will create a new container.
To connect to the container from a terminal, run the following command in a terminal:
docker exec -it container_name /bin/bash
where conainer_name is the name of the container running the image.
There is an issue with the image where the version of sympy is wrong. As described in this tutorial, the version must be downgraded to 0.7.1.
http://docs.ros.org/en/melodic/api/moveit_tutorials/html/doc/ikfast/ikfast_tutorial.html
First, insall pip
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python-pip
Then, downgrade sympy. For some reason, the usual method of running pip install doesn't work. Instead, download the correct version's tar file from https://pypi.org/project/sympy/0.7.1/#files.
After placing the file in the Docker image using the Docker desktop file manager, run
python -m pip install sympy-0.7.1.tar.gz
The IKfast documentation is found at http://www.openrave.org/docs/latest_stable/openravepy/ikfast/
You should be able to run the example provided in the documentation:
python `openrave-config --python-dir`/openravepy/_openravepy_/ikfast.py --robot=robots/barrettwam.robot.xml --baselink=0 --eelink=7 --savefile=ik.cpp --freeindex=2
The example was succesfull if you see a large file ik.cpp in your working directory.