Using only the simulated robot

This setup tutorial will guide you through setting up your PC to run the simulated robot with the demos.

Installing Ubuntu

  1. Download Ubuntu image on your PC from the following link: Ubuntu 24.04.2 (Noble Numbat).

  2. For installing Ubuntu on your PC, follow the guide Install Ubuntu Desktop.

Installing ROS

For installing ROS 2 Jazzy, follow the guide for Ubuntu (deb packages).

Creating a colcon workspace

Create a workspace for colcon as shown here.

Cloning Robotont’s packages

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

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

  1. robotont_description

  2. robotont_nuc_description

  3. robotont_gazebo

  4. robotont_navigation

  5. robotont_msgs

You can find the demos from the following repositories:

  1. AR Demo Follow-the-leader

  2. AR Steering

  3. Slam 2D

  4. Mapping 3D

See the Demos on Gazebo for more information about the demos.

To clone the packages, for example, robotont_description:

git clone https://github.com/robotont/robotont_description.git

Building the colcon workspace

cd colcon_ws
colcon build

Sourcing the workspace

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

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
_images/colors_world_example.png

Refer to individual demo package READMEs for more details on launching specific demos.