⚠️ Simulator assets are now apart of this repository!

CSM Gazebo Simulator

This repository contains a core ROS2 package used for simulating CSM robots.

Setup/Usage

To run this project, you will need a ROS2 and Gazebo installation. Currently, the easiest and best pairing includes ROS2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic (both LTS versions), but requires an Ubuntu 24.04 install (or equivalent). It is also possible to pair ROS2 Humble with Gazebo Harmonic on Ubuntu 22.04 if necessary, although this pairing is not officially supported and may require manual compilation of other simulation packages. Some additional considerations include:

• Running the simulator in WSL is nearly unusable due to performance reasons. A native install or dual-boot is recommended.
• If using WSL, Gazebo releases prior to Garden do not have functional hardware-accelerated graphics (and software rendering is unusable for this project).
• The TrackedVehicle plugin used by this project does not work out-of-the-box with Gazebo releases prior to Harmonic.
• ROS2 Jazzy is capable of being built from source on Ubuntu 22.04, however, rosdep will not be functional, meaning dependencies will also have to built from source.

Dependencies & Standalone Demo Installation:

1. Follow the ROS2 install guide: Jazzy, Humble
   • To verify your installation, execute printenv | grep ROS.
2. Choose a Gazebo version to pair with ROS, and install ros_gz bridge libraries (this page lists all possible pairings and their level of support)
3. Install Gazebo: Harmonic (the release version can be changed using the dropdown menu)
   • To verify your installation, try running Gazebo using gz sim.
4. Create a new ROS workspace and clone this repo:

   mkdir sim-ws && cd sim-ws
   mkdir src && cd src
   git clone https://github.com/Cardinal-Space-Mining/csm_gz_sim

5. Make sure all required packages are installed using rosdep:

   rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths . -r -y

6. Build and source (execute when in workspace directory):

   colcon build --symlink-install
   source install/setup.bash

7. Run the demo:

   ros2 launch csm_gz_sim demo.launch.py
   

ROS2 Project Integration

• TODO -- See this repo for example usage.

Last updated: 9/14/24