Simulation

[onkoe]

We need to set up a simulator to do Autonomous testing without giving Electrical... some flashbacks. It's also much faster than physical testing... plus, we get to do it whenever we want!

Description

In the past, we discussed using Webots, an open-source GUI + CLI platform for making a robotics sim.

ROS 2 has a tutorial, Setting up a robot simulation, where they teach you how to set up a sim itself.

Modeling

However, you need a lot more than just the simulation. One of the most essential elements is a model of the Rover. To get that, we need... a model. And there are two ways to get one!

1. Manually build a URDF file from scratch
   • This may work for initial testing, but it shouldn't reach the main branch like this.
2. Generate a URDF from a CAD model (might be more work for Mechanical)
   • That's the proper way to do things.
   • Mechanical uses SolidWorks for their modeling, so we'd use the solidworks_urdf_exporter to get a proper model.
     • Install it using the instructions from this tutorial.
     • The process of exporting the model to the correct format is documented here.

World

Simulations are dependent on having some world data. Worlds (.wbt files) are the most important file type for the simulation. For more info about them and their creation, see the Webots documentation: Tutorial 1.

Sensors

All of our sensors are simulated by Webots. As such, we need to support their generic sensors by publishing their data to our canonical topics.