#Simulator

This branch contains the alpha release of the simulator.

It contains the following functionalities-:

• Spawn Spiri in Gazebo with a choice of a world

• Publish sensor data on individual topics.

• Control Spiri in the simulator by a joystick.

The code has been tested on ROS Hydro and Ubuntu 12.04

Installation instructions

Install using a script

wget https://raw.github.com/Pleiades-Spiri/Spiri_Public/installation_simulator/installation.sh
chmod +x installation.sh
./installation.sh

This will install ROS, create a ROS workspace as well as download the Simulator code.

It will require your password to install packages.

Jump to the command section.

Install different components independently

If you have installed using a script you dont need to do this. commands

• Install ROS

http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/Ubuntu

Install the ros-desktop-full package as it contains Gazebo and other programs required for the simulator.

• Install Gazebo sensor plugins

sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-hector-quadrotor

• Install the Controllers

sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-ros-controllers

• Install joystick drivers

sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-joy

• Create a ros workspace

http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingandConfiguringROSEnvironment

After this step there should be a folder called as catkin_ws

• Get the Simulator

cd catkin_ws/src

wget https://raw.github.com/Pleiades-Spiri/Spiri_Public/installation_simulator/Simulator-1.0.tar.gz

tar -zxvf Simulator-1.0.tar.gz 

mv Simulator-1.0 ./Simulator

cd ..

catkin_make

echo "export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH:~/catkin_ws/src/Simulator/spiri_description/models" >> ~/.bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

These commands will build the code required for the Simulator.

Make sure these commands are in your bashrc

nano ~/.bashrc

source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

source /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash

export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH:~/catkin_ws/src/Simulator/spiri_description/models

Commands

To launch Spiri in an empty world

roslaunch spiri_description spiri_empty_world.launch

To launch Spiri in Citadel Hill

roslaunch spiri_description spiri_citadel.launch

Control Spiri with a joystick

Xbox controller

roslaunch spiri_teleop xbox_controller.launch

Logitech Gamepad

roslaunch spiri_teleop logitech_gamepad.launch

Script to process the Depth Map

ROS_NAMESPACE=stereo rosrun stereo_image_proc stereo_image_proc _approximate_sync:=True _queue_size:=10

View the Depth Map

rosrun image_view stereo_view stereo:=/stereo image:=image_rect_color _approximate_sync:=True _queue_size:=10

View the front left camera

rosrun image_view image_view image:=/stereo/left/image_raw

View the front right camera

rosrun image_view image_view image:=/stereo/right/image_raw

View the bottom facing camera

rosrun image_view image_view image:=/downward_cam/camera/image

To visualize the robot and point cloud data in rviz

roscd spiri_description

rosrun rviz rviz -d spiri_pointcloud.rviz

Nodes

gazebo

Launches spiri in a world with all its sensors

Subscribed topics

• /cmd_vel
• /wind

Published Topics

• /altimeter
• /fix
• /fix/pose
• /ground_truth/state
• /raw_imu
• /pressure_height
• /magnetic
• /stereo/left/image_raw
• /stereo/right/image_raw

quadrotor_teleop

Control Spiri with joystick

Subscribed topics

• /joy

Published topics

• /cmd_vel

Troubleshooting

Error [ConnectionManager.cc:116] Failed to connect to master in 30 seconds

This is a known bug in Gazebo

https://bitbucket.org/osrf/gazebo/issue/732/gazebo-never-starts-when-loading-models

To fix this do the following steps-:

cd catkin_ws/src

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/osrf/gazebo_models

Add this command to your bashrc

export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH:~/catkin_ws/src/gazebo_models

Restart your terminal and it should fix the error

General ROS commands

To list all ROS topics

rostopic list

To view any ROS topic

rostopic echo topic_name

For example to view altimeter data

rostopic echo /altimeter