Simulating Valkyrie

Prerequisites

To follow these instructions, you must first have the following:

• Valkyrie Software(get that here)
• Gazebo 4(Instructions for upgrading from Gazebo 2.x to Gazebo 4.x can be found here)

Start Simulating

Once you have all of the Valkyrie software on your computer, make sure it's compiled and installed,

cd ~/val_indigo && catkin_make install

Now you need to launch the sim. Currently the Valkyrie software comes with a pinned sim in which Valkyrie is pinned at the torso as well as a full simulator where the robot is not pinned. To launch the pinned simulator, simply execute in a terminal,

roslaunch val_gazebo val_sim_pinned.launch

or for the full unpinned sim, run the following command,

roslaunch val_gazebo val_sim.launch

In either case the Gazebo simulator will come up showing Valkyrie,

These launch scripts also launch a controller manager, so the controller manager is sitting and waiting to load ROS controllers. For info on how to write ROS controllers, we have a page with some rough instructions [here](How To Write A Controller For Valkyrie) or you can refer to the ROS control wiki.

Additionally, if you are interested in using IHMC's controller you may visit the IHMC wiki. You can find their Valkyrie specific ROS control stuff here.