Gazebo with SITL Documentation Is Outdated

AhmedHisham1 commented 5 years ago

I want to publish the Gazebo’s virtual camera stream to a ROS topic. The documentation page says that this is done using the "ros_gazebo_camera" package. However, I can't find this package anywhere. Hence, I think this info. is outdated or false.

doc link: http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/using-gazebo-simulator-with-sitl.html

Is there any workaround to publish the virtual camera feed to a ROS topic?

I'm trying this with the default SITL "iris_demo" model.

brunoolivieri commented 5 years ago

@AhmedHisham1 thanks for informing that information could be not accurate anymore.

Have you tried the discussion forums for help?

rajat2004 commented 5 years ago

Not an expert on ROS (actually haven't used it in some time!) The name is probably incorrect, try looking for gazebo_ros_camera plugin, mentioned here - http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=ros_gzplugins#Camera

I think you should be able to find some more info on how to accomplish this, this could be helpful - https://discuss.px4.io/t/how-to-add-a-ros-camera-to-iris-for-gazebo-simulation/5118 This is specific to PX4, but ROS-related info is still plentiful

Hwurzburg commented 5 years ago

@peterbarker Peter, can you shed some light on this?...what is needed and who should do it or provide me the details to get it done...

khancyr commented 5 years ago

I will update the doc

Hwurzburg commented 5 years ago

Thanks Pierre

To-beas commented 3 years ago

Hi,

Ist the documentation up to date by now? Following the doc for this I can start gazebo environment with plugin but I get an error on starting sitl frame gazebo-iris:

$ ../Tools/autotest/sim_vehicle.py -f gazebo-iris --console --map

BUILD SUMMARY Build directory: /home/tobias/ardupilot/build/sitl Target Text Data BSS Total

bin/arducopter 3564783 157539 161576 3883898

Build commands will be stored in build/sitl/compile_commands.json 'build' finished successfully (5m18.753s) SIM_VEHICLE: Using defaults from (/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/copter.parm,/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/gazebo-iris.parm) SIM_VEHICLE: Run ArduCopter SIM_VEHICLE: "/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/run_in_terminal_window.sh" "ArduCopter" "/home/tobias/ardupilot/build/sitl/bin/arducopter" "-S" "--model" "gazebo-iris" "--speedup" "1" "--defaults" "/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/copter.parm,/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/gazebo-iris.parm" "-I0" SIM_VEHICLE: Run MavProxy SIM_VEHICLE: "mavproxy.py" "--map" "--console" "--out" "127.0.0.1:14550" "--out" "127.0.0.1:14551" "--master" "tcp:127.0.0.1:5760" "--sitl" "127.0.0.1:5501" RiTW: Starting ArduCopter : /home/tobias/ardupilot/build/sitl/bin/arducopter -S --model gazebo-iris --speedup 1 --defaults /home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/copter.parm,/home/tobias/ardupilot/Tools/autotest/default_params/gazebo-iris.parm -I0 [Run MavProxy] An exception has occurred with command: 'mavproxy.py --map --console --out 127.0.0.1:14550 --out 127.0.0.1:14551 --master tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 --sitl 127.0.0.1:5501' [Errno 2] No such file or directory

Every time though it starts compiling ~800 packages. Thanks for all the work so far.

srmainwaring commented 1 year ago

Hi @Hwurzburg - the current wiki information for using Gazebo with SITL refers to a version that is now in maintenance (Gazebo11 or Gazebo classic) and uses plugins in external repos that are mostly maintenance only.

The current Gazebo version supported by OSRF is Gazebo Garden. We have plugins to support this version in https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot_gazebo and also a number of example models in https://github.com/ArduPilot/SITL_Models/tree/master/Ignition.

OSRF have just finished a major namespace rename back to Gazebo from Ignition. Now that's complete I think it makes sense to revisit the ArduPilot projects and documentation bring them up to date. The main ArduPilot plugin repo is current with Gazebo Garden, and the project README reflects that. The subfolder and docs in the SITL_Models repo still refers to Ignition so I'll be updating that next.

I'd like to help to bring the wiki docs up to date and provide a good walk through the various examples. Gazebo is quite feature rich, not as good with aerodynamics as RF, but it does have good peripheral support and provides an environment for non-flying vehicles that might be better utilised if we documented it better.

I'm happy to take your steer on structure etc. but think it would be good to have a meta-issue to outline a plan for updating the docs that can be tracked by a series of smaller issues / PRs.

Finally, many of the ROS examples could be replicated in simulation using Gazebo. It might be nice to have documentation to reflect this. My preference would be to target the most recent environment: ROS Humble / Gazebo Garden / Ubuntu 22.04. There is still a large community using ROS Melodic / Noetic with Gazebo11 - but that environment is becoming hard to support (and near impossible on macOS). I'd recommend prompting people to make the shift as the tools for ROS2 support are all available now (i.e. mavros is running on ROS2 and works well).

Hwurzburg commented 1 year ago

@srmainwaring feel free to post an outline for tracking here and to make contributions in prs...you can use the present format for the Gazebo docs as a template, but feel free to deviate.....bullets can be done thusly

[ ] first task
[ ] second task

srmainwaring commented 1 year ago

Update Gazebo SITL Documents

Task list for updating the Gazebo SITL documents. Free free to suggest items to add...

Legacy version - Gazebo11

[x] Add page for the previous version of Gazebo (Gazebo11) using the existing instructions.

Landing page (Using Gazebo Simulator with SITL)

[x] Update preconditions - link to Gazebo Garden install instructions.
[x] Update recommended versions: Ubuntu - Focal and Jammy; MacOS - Big Sur and Monterey.
[x] Update link to the ArduPilot hosted version of the plugin.
[x] Mirror the installation instructions from the README and the examples for the Iris and Zephyr.
[x] Add link to examples provided in SITL_Models.
[x] Record new video with using the new environment (where to post?).
[x] Add links to some examples - perhaps the ship landing demo?

Technical documents (for devs)

[ ] Explain how the Gazebo plugin now uses the SITL - JSON backend.
[ ] Document other technical aspects of the core plugin - lockstep, control types, conversion of PWM to commands.

Technical documents (for users)

[ ] Add guide to adding a new vehicle.
[ ] Add guide to adding peripherals.
[x] Add guide for setting speedup parameters (running with RTF > 1).

Model documents

[x] Rename SITL_Models/Ignition to SITL_Models/Gazebo

srmainwaring commented 9 months ago

@Hwurzburg this can be closed as completed.

ArduPilot / ardupilot_wiki