ROS For Absolute Beginners

(Robot Operating System)

Lentin Joseph
http://robocademy.com Founder/Instructor of Robocademy
Founder of Qbotics Labs
 Day 5
Simulation and Visualization in
ROS

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 Agenda

• What is a Robot simulation?

• List of popular robot simulators

• ROS Simulator: Gazebo

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 Agenda

• Getting started with Gazebo simulator

• What is URDF & Xacro robot model?

• Basic Demo of URDF & Xacro in Gazebo

• Rviz: ROS Visualization

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 Agenda

• Turtlebot Demonstration and inspection

• Controlling of Turtlebot in Gazebo

• Visualizing sensor data of Turtlebot

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Robotics Simulation

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 What is Robotics simulation?
• Process of creating a virtual robot prototype to verify the
accuracy and efficiency of robot design/model

• Simulation is done before the production of actual robot

to perfect the robot design

• We can check the project viable or not

• Simulation involves very less expense compared to the

hardware prototyping

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 List of popular robot simulators
• Gazebo Simulator: http://gazebosim.org/

• V-REP: http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/

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 List of popular robot simulators
• Webots: https://www.cyberbotics.com/overview
• Actin: http://www.energid.com/software/actin-robot-
control/
• Open Rave: http://openrave.org/

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ROS Simulator: Gazebo

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 Features of Gazebo
• FREE & Open Source

• Dynamics Simulation: ODE, Bullet,

Simbody physics engines support

• Advanced 3D Graphics: Using OGRE

• Sensors and Noise: Can generate various

types of sensor data
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 Features of Gazebo
• Plugins support

• Robot Models: Inbuilt models or can

create custom models

• TCP/IP Transport

• ROS Support

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 Getting started with Gazebo
simulator
• Launching Gazebo simulator

• $ gazebo

OR
• $ gzserver [Running physics engine]
• $ gzclient [GUI]

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 Getting started with Gazebo
simulator
• Launching Gazebo simulator with ROS
support

• $ roslaunch gazebo_ros
empty_world.launch

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GUI Controls in Gazebo

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Robot Modelling in ROS

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 What is URDF and Xacro?
• Unified Robot Description Format (URDF),
which is an XML format for representing a
robot model in ROS

• It is a XML based description

• Xacro simplifies URDF by adding macros

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 URDF Example: Pan & Tilt
<link name="base_link">
<visual>
…………….
</visual>

<collision>
…………….
</collision>
</link>

<joint name="pan_joint" type="revolute">

…………….
</joint>

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 Converting Xacro to URDF

Starting roscore
$ roscore

Converting from Xacro to URDF

$ rosrun xacro xacro model.xacro > model.urdf

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 Adding a URDF model into Gazebo
Launching an empty world
• $ roslaunch gazebo_ros empty_world.launch

Spawning the robot model to Gazebo

• $ rosrun gazebo_ros spawn_model –file
./pan_tilt.urdf –urdf –z 1 –model pan_tilt

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 Rviz: ROS Visualization
• 3D Visualization tool for ROS

• Launching Rviz
• $ roscore

• $ rosrun rviz rviz

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 Rviz: ROS Visualization

• Visualizing a robot model in Rviz

• $roslaunch urdf_tutorial display.launch

model:=pan_tilt.urdf

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Rviz: ROS Visualization

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Rviz: GUI Controls

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 Turtlebot Simulation

$ roslaunch turtlebot_gazebo
turtlebot_world.launch

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 Installing Turtlebot simulation
Installing apt GUI package manager
• $ sudo apt-get install synaptic

Install Turtlebot packages

• $ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-turtlebot-
gazebo

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 Turtlebot Visualization in Rviz

• $ roslaunch turtlebot_rviz_launchers
view_model.launch

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Turtlebot Visualization in Rviz

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 Turtlebot Teleoperation

• $ roslaunch turtlebot_teleop
keyboard_teleop.launch

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Robot Simulation Demos

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Turtlebot 3 Simulation

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 Turtlebot 3 Simulation
Launching simulation
• $ roslaunch turtlebot3_gazebo
turtlebot3_world.launch

Launching Teleoperation
• $ roslaunch turtlebot3_teleop
turtlebot3_teleop_key.launch

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Thormang3 Simulation

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 Thormang3 Simulation
Launching the simulation
• $ roslaunch thormang3_gazebo
robotis_world.launch

Moving a joint
$ rostopic pub topic_name/command
std_msgs/Float64 joint_value

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 Exercise - 1

• Install Turtlebot 3 and Thormang3

packages in your system

• Teleoperate Turtlebot 3

• Move Joints of Thormang3 using rostopic

command tool

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 Conclusion
• Discussed Robotics Simulation

• Discussed basics of Gazebo and

demonstrated basic robot model

• ROS Visualization: Rviz

• Turtlebot simulation and visualization

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