Noah-bot Gazebo Simulation - ROS2

Overview

Gazebo simulation for the Noah-bot robot.

URDF

It contains the URDF model of the robot with accurate visual meshes.

Sensors

• Kinect Camera. Ros topics:
  • /noah/kinect/camera_info
  • /noah/kinect/depth/camera_info
  • /noah/kinect/depth/image_raw
  • /noah/kinect/image_raw
  • /noah/kinect/points
• Laser Scanner. Ros topics:
  • /noah/laser_scan

Diff drive controller

Ros topics:

• /noah/odom
• /noah/cmd_vel

Officially supported platform:

• Ubuntu version: Focal Fossa 20.04
• ROS Version: Foxy Fitzroy
• Gazebo version: 11

Note: Are you looking for the ROS1 simulation? See here.

Repository organization

Summary of of the packages in the repository.

noah_description:

• Holds Noah xacro files for URDF definition.
• Simple launch file for:
  • Convert xacro to urdf
  • Run robot_state_publisher (Optional):
    • Publishes static TF.
    • Publishes robot description at /noah/robot_description topic.
  • Run joint_state_publisher (Optional)
  • Run rviz2 (Optional)

noah_gazebo:

• Holds three gazebo worlds to spawn Noah in: empty.world, test.world and small_house.world.
• Launch file for:
  • Run gazebo using an available world.
  • Includes noah_description launch file.Include noah_description's launch file.
  • Spawn Noah
  • Run rviz2 (optional)

Using docker

Building the code

1. Install docker
2. If using nvidia, install nvidia-docker
3. Clone this repository.
4. Build the docker image running:

   DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -t noahbot:foxy -f docker/Dockerfile .

   After this, the image tagged as noahbot:foxy will be ready to run the Noahbot simulation.

Running the simulation

Run:

./docker/run ros2 launch noah_gazebo noah_gazebo.launch.py

To start the simulation.

Quickly test changes without rebuilding the container

If you want to test code changes quickly without rebuilding the container, you can use the develop script:

$ ./docker/develop

Which will open a shell inside the container, mounting the local copy of the ROS packages. You can quickly re-build the code with:

$ cd /colcon_ws
$ colcon build

The develop script will also run the containers with host networking, so if you open multiple ones you can easily send ROS messages across them.

Non-containerized Installation

1. Install ROS Foxy Fitzroy
2. Install Gazebo 11
3. Clone this repository in your colcon workspace.

   ├── colcon_ws
       └── src
           └── Noah-bot-simulation-ros2
   

4. rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
5. Build the project and source the workspace

   colcon build
   source install/setup.bash
   source /usr/share/gazebo/setup.bash

6. It is ready to be used! See Run Simulation!

Run Simulation!

ros2 launch noah_gazebo noah_gazebo.launch.py

Use a different world!

ros2 launch noah_gazebo noah_gazebo.launch.py world:=small_house.world

Use the rviz argument and run rviz2 along the simulation!

ros2 launch noah_gazebo noah_gazebo.launch.py rviz:=true

You can also start the simulation without the Gazebo GUI when you don't have a display (like in CI):

ros2 launch noah_gazebo noah_gazebo.launch.py gazebo_gui:=false

Try Teleoperating Noah!

Once simulation is running, in other terminal run:

ros2 run  teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard cmd_vel:=noah/cmd_vel