Gazebo Tutorial

This tutorial describes how to use Sawyer with Gazebo the standard Physics Simulator for ROS.

Note: This page describes an upcoming feature in Intera 5.2. Gazebo Simulation for Sawyer is not yet released.

Please visit the Gazebo Tutorials homepage for more information

Installation/Prerequisites

• Make sure you have followed the Workstation Setup tutorial before beginning this section
• Ensure the following software packages are installed:

ROS Kinetic

$ sudo apt-get install gazebo7 ros-kinetic-qt-build ros-kinetic-gazebo-ros-control ros-kinetic-gazebo-ros-pkgs ros-kinetic-ros-control ros-kinetic-control-toolbox ros-kinetic-realtime-tools ros-kinetic-ros-controllers ros-kinetic-xacro python-wstool ros-kinetic-tf-conversions ros-kinetic-kdl-parser ros-kinetic-sns-ik-lib

Sawyer Simulator Installation

ROS Kinetic

• From your catkin workspace where the SDK resides, use wstool to install and update:

Install sawyer_simulator

$ cd ~/ros_ws/src
$ wstool init .
$ wstool merge https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RethinkRobotics/sawyer_simulator/development/sawyer_simulator.rosinstall
$ wstool update

IMPORTANT: Make sure all simulator repositories update to their proper branch.

Build Source

$ source /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash
$ cd ~/ros_ws
$ catkin_make

Simulation

• Run the Intera shell script with sim specified:

$ ./intera.sh sim

• Start simulation with controllers:

$ roslaunch sawyer_gazebo sawyer_world.launch

By default the robot will be in the enabled state. To enable, run the enable_robot script from the baxter_tools package. To start and switch the controllers, use the JointCommand topic as documented in the Baxter SDK.

• Optional: Test/tune the velocity controllers or position controllers using a RQT dashboard GUI. Make sure you are in the right joint command mode when using these:

$ roslaunch baxter_sim_hardware baxter_sdk_position_rqt.launch

or

$ roslaunch baxter_sim_hardware baxter_sdk_velocity_rqt.launch

Smoke Test

Check if the simulator was installed and launched successfully by typing the following commands:

$ rosnode list

This should list the nodes as here.

$ rostopic list

This should list the topics as here.

$ rostopic echo /robot/state

By default, the following messages should be displayed at 100 HZ.

enabled: False
stopped: False
error: False
estop_button: 0
estop_source: 0
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Run SDK Examples

• Start Wobbler example:

$ ./intera.sh sim
$ rosrun intera_examples joint_velocity_wobbler.py

• Start keyboard joint position example:

$ ./intera.sh sim
$ rosrun intera_examples joint_position_keyboard.py

For additional information on the interfaces that are implemented with this release, visit the Simulator API page.

Troubleshooting

• Please refer to the troubleshooting page Gazebo Troubleshooting

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