Migrate to Ignition / TB4 simulation

[SteveMacenski]

We want to use the time in Humble to migrate to Ignition for Nav2 moving forward.

• [x] Migrate AWS warehouse world to Ignition
• [x] Provide TB4 simulation launch file (tb4_simulation_launch.py) for Ignition analog to TB3 for Gazebo using whatever standard launch file provided by TB4 (I believe its a warehouse)
• [x] Update simple commander examples to using Ignition with the AWS warehouse world migration
• [ ] Migrate system tests to using ignition with AWS warehouse world after https://github.com/ros-planning/navigation2/pull/2797 is merged
• [ ] Consider updating TB4 simulation launch examples to using the AWS warehouse world that the system tests and simple commander API uses. Or migrate all a different warehouse. Doesn't have to all be the same, but consider it.

[padhupradheep]

Additionally there are some more suggestions:

• Would be also nice to see an Omnidirectional robot part of the stack (will definitely be useful for people who wants to get started with something like MPPIC ).
• On my initial experience with the Ignition, I see that, Ignition messages already have namespaces in them, so it would be nice to remap the same to the ROS messages.
• Additional to above point, we can use single RViz for multi-robot viz and may be add a drop-down list to the navigation-plugin in RViz to handle it.

[SteveMacenski]

Those are not in the roadmap for just a migration, there are tickets already open for ackermann vehicle examples but we do not plan to support multiple robot platforms in the default bringup -- people can always modify the launch files for their own navigation system based on other robot systems.

[vinnnyr]

I found a robot model that has a public (Ignition) Gazebo sim: https://github.com/iRobotEducation/create3_sim Isn't Create3 what TB4 is based off of?

[SteveMacenski]

A bit too is having the binaries released in rolling and such so that we can use it in CI without an underlay space (and so users can have a nice out-of-the-box experience). I think there were things before, but not quite ready and binaries not released yet.

[borongyuan]

Hi, I have migrated AWS Warehouse World to Ignition Gazebo. https://github.com/borongyuan/aws-robomaker-small-warehouse-world Currently it's just an empty world and lacks testing. Currently Ignition Gazebo already supports ros2_control, so there should be no problem integrating TB4 simulation. But there is still a lot of work to be done.

[SteveMacenski]

Thanks! That's a great step forward though! We were just talking about this at the working group meeting yesterday.

[ahcorde]

Hi,

I'm planning to contribute with the new Gazebo simulation. But it's not clear for me where I should start and I have some questions:

• Do you want to get rid of Gazebo-classic ?
• Are you thinking about living with both simulator at the same time in the repository ?
• is there any roadmap or issue for this ?
• which ROS 2 version should I target? humble, iron or rolling?
• what's about aws-robomaker-small-warehouse-world ? I checked that is was migrated in a personal Github repository but I couldn't see any open PR or branch in https://github.com/aws-robotics/aws-robomaker-small-warehouse-world.

If you can clarify these questions and maybe some others related to these topics that may have raised in the nav2 meeting , I'm happy to open PRs and contribute.

[SteveMacenski]

Awesome! I'd love the help!

Do you want to get rid of Gazebo-classic ?

Long term, yes, because its not supported anymore and I want Nav2 to be an example of best practices for ROS 2 and dogfood all the same stuff others are using.

Are you thinking about living with both simulator at the same time in the repository ?

For a distribution or two, yes, so that we can have the option to fallback if there are issues and to show side-by-side launch options for each. Just having 2 launch files for bringing up one versus the other.

is there any roadmap or issue for this ?

That is this.

• [x] Create tested and working launch files to use new-Gazebo. Probably just with the default TB3 sandbox to get started
• [ ] In no particular order: Update the robot model to be something more practical and/or TB4 if its finally ready
• [ ] In no particular order: Update the world environment to something more practical. The Sandbox world doesn't exactly inspire confidence from an out-of-the-box user experience
• [ ] Update the system tests to use new gazebo
• [ ] Optional: Update the system tests to use a more practically complex environment -- though, there's some good work here already done in a PR

which ROS 2 version should I target? humble, iron or rolling?

Rolling, I'll plan to backport launch files for the new simulator to Humble/Iron if the matching Gazebo versions allow for it (but as an option, not a replacement)

I'm not sure what you mean about the migration to a personal github, it still appears to be released under the parent: https://github.com/ros/rosdistro/blob/master/rolling/distribution.yaml#LL500C19-L500C19

[ahcorde]

• [ ] Create tested and working launch files to use new-Gazebo. Probably just with the default TB3 sandbox to get started

I started with this bullet point. Here it's the PR https://github.com/ros-planning/navigation2/pull/3634

I added some new dependencies, let me know how does it sounds

[xkaraman]

Hey, I can see that a check is on tb4_simulation launch file. I followed through #3634 but I can't seem to find a commit about it. Is this work done or maybe I can check the turtlebot4 package and its launch files on how to integrate this?

[ahcorde]

You can run the turtlebot4 simulation using nav2 from the official repository. You can follow these steps.