Gazebo Simulator

This setup tutorial will guide you through setting up your PC to run the simulated robot on gazebo and some basics commands.

Dependencies

Make sure you check: Prerequisites and you have cloned and tested robotont_description and robotont_nuc_description packages, you can find complete instructions on Visualize.

All Robotont’s packages can be accessed from Robotont’s GitHub.

Packages necessary to run the Gazebo simulation with Robotont’s demos are following:

Install Gazebo Harmonic and the ROS ↔ Gazebo integration packages (required for simulation time /clock, physics stepping, and Gazebo transport bridges), plus common Robotont description tools:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y \
    gz-harmonic \
    ros-jazzy-ros-gz \
    ros-jazzy-ros-gz-sim \
    ros-jazzy-ros-gz-bridge \
    ros-jazzy-xacro \
    ros-jazzy-robot-state-publisher

After cloning the Robotont and gz_planar_move repositories into your workspace src/, install remaining dependencies with rosdep:

cd ~colcon_ws
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

Building and sourcing the colcon workspace

cd colcon_ws
colcon build

Make the workspace visible to ROS 2 (must be done for every new terminal)

source ~/colcon_ws/install/setup.bash

For automatic sourcing:

echo "source ~/colcon_ws/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Running the Simulation

Launch file arguments

Name	Description	Options
`generation`	Specify the generation of robotont model that is to be loaded	2.1, 3 (default)
`model`	Specify the model that is to be loaded into the world	robotont_gazebo_basic, robotont_gazebo_lidar, robotont_gazebo_nuc (default)
`world`	Specify world the robot is spawned in	bangbang.sdf, between.sdf, colors.sdf, mapping.sdf, maze.sdf, minimaze.sdf, minimaze_ar.sdf, empty_world.sdf (default)
`x`, `y`, `z`	Specify the robot’s spawn pose	Number, 0 (default)

Tip

For example, loading the generation 3 model in colors.sdf world at pose (-2, 1, 0):

ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=colors.sdf x:=-2 y:=1

Worlds

World	Example	Launch Command
minimaze.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=minimaze.sdf`
bangbang.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=bangbang.sdf`
between.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=between.sdf`
colors.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=colors.sdf`
mapping.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=mapping.sdf`
maze.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=maze.sdf`
minimaze_ar.sdf		`ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=minimaze_ar.sdf`

After building and sourcing your workspace, you can spawn the robot in a gazebo world, for example:

ros2 launch robotont_gazebo gazebo.launch.py world:=colors.sdf

Open a second terminal and use teleop_twist_keyboard to control the robot:

ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard

If everything worked correctly, you should see the following in your terminal:

By pressing different keys in this terminal, you’ll see the robot move Refer to individual demo package READMEs for more details on launching specific demos. See the Demos on Gazebo for more information about the demos.