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This is going to be tricky, almost no matter what. You're likely to need at least sporadic root access, because ROS splits its dependencies between ROS packages (OpenCV, for example, is stored in ROS) and OS-specific packaging systems (gtest, for example, is grabbed from somewhere else).

If you do a from-source install (see the Ubuntu Source Install Instructions, for example), you'll spend awhile compiling, but this will build and install all of the ROS-packaged dependencies for you. For satisfying system-level dependencies, you'd need to pass along a few package-install requests to your sysadmin, or end up up to your elbows in building packages yourself. While doable, that would be a huge pain in the neck.