Issue in loading world into Gazebo

[xela-95]

I'm trying to reproduce this tutorial by using a conda environment created in the following way:

mamba create -c conda-forge -c robotology -n yarp_tutorials_env  cmake ninja pkg-config make compilers yarp icub-contrib-common gazebo icub-models gazebo-yarp-plugins idyntree

I was able to compile and install.

I then started yarpserver and yarpmanager and from it I've launched the following applications:

Tutorial_on_Impedance_Control_system

Tutorial_on_Impedance_Control

This module is failing, maybe because icub is not loaded in Gazebo, probably an issue related to https://github.com/vvv-school/tutorial_gazebo-simple-model/issues/1.

I've noted that the gzserver parameters are -slibgazebo_yarp_clock.so icub_simple_fixed_world/icub_simple_fixed.world, hence yarp tries to load Gazebo with icub_simple_fixed_world/icub_simple_fixed.world but it is not able to find this world file.

We searched for it but we didn't find it too. Where is placed this file?

[traversaro]

This is related to https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/issues/1563 .

[traversaro]

This is related to robotology/robotology-superbuild#1563 .

Actually, this issue in particular is a bit more complicated. The icub_simple_fixed_world/icub_simple_fixed.world file is installed by https://github.com/robotology/icub-gazebo-wholebody, that is a project that we removed from the superbuild in 2021.02, see:

• https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/issues/543
• https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/pull/555

So, this repo would not work even if we use the robotology-superbuild from source, not only if you are using the conda packages.

[traversaro]

The world itself is quite basic (see https://github.com/robotology/icub-gazebo-wholebody/blob/master/worlds/icub_simple_fixed_world/icub_simple_fixed.world), so probably the easiest fix is to include and install it as part of this repo. However, also the model://icub_fixed_no_hands model it refers to is not installed anymore (it used to be part of icub-gazebo, package now removed from the superbuild, see https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/issues/542 and https://github.com/robotology/robotology-superbuild/pull/646).

So probably if we actually want to use this repo, we should:

• Copy the world in this repo, and update it to use SDF 1.7
• Make it refer to a modern mantained model contained in icub-models or ergocub-software, such as model://iCubGazeboV2_5_fixed or a similar model from ergocub .

[xela-95]

The world itself is quite basic (see https://github.com/robotology/icub-gazebo-wholebody/blob/master/worlds/icub_simple_fixed_world/icub_simple_fixed.world), so probably the easiest fix is to include and install it as part of this repo. However, also the model://icub_fixed_no_hands model it refers to is not installed anymore (it used to be part of icub-gazebo, package now removed from the superbuild, see robotology/robotology-superbuild#542 and robotology/robotology-superbuild#646).

So probably if we actually want to use this repo, we should:

• Copy the world in this repo, and update it to use SDF 1.7
• Make it refer to a modern mantained model contained in icub-models or ergocub-software, such as model://iCubGazeboV2_5_fixed or a similar model from ergocub .

Just to summarize, this approach actually worked. The code is pushed in this branch of my fork of the tutorial: https://github.com/xela-95/tutorial_impedance-control/tree/fix-refs

Moreover in order to make Gazebo be able to find models and world files we added a bash script to add to Gazebo environment variables the folders in which models and world files are installed from the tutorial:

export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=${CONDA_PREFIX}/share/gazebo/models:${GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH}
export GAZEBO_RESOURCE_PATH=${CONDA_PREFIX}/share/gazebo/worlds:${GAZEBO_RESOURCE_PATH}

By placing it inside ${CONDA_PREFIX}/etc/conda/activate.d, the script will be activated automatically when activating the conda environment.