This repository constains a vehicle simulator for use in Gazebo. The simulator is based on drcsim developed by OSRF. Drcsim focused on the simulation of Boston Dynamics Atlas robot for the DARPA Robotics Challenge and the vehicle simulation is only a small part of the package for the vehicle task. This project tries to reuse this part of code. The goal is to create a complete simulation package for research on autonomous vehicles.

Assume your catkin worksapce locates at $HOME/Workspace/catkin_ws.

$ cd ~/Workspace/catkin_ws
$ wstool init src
$ cd ~/Workspace/catkin_ws/src
$ wstool set vehicle_simulator https://github.com/rxdu/vehicle_simulator.git --git
$ wstool update

You need to set a few environment variables so that Gazebo could find vehicle models and plugins properly. Put the following two lines in your ~/.bashrc

export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=$HOME/Workspace/catkin_ws/devel/lib/:$GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH
export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=$HOME/Workspace/catkin_ws/src/vehicle_simulator/vehicle_description/models:$GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH

Note: You need to adjust the path according the configurations on your computer.

You can start a simulation with a drc_vehicle or drc_vehicle_xp900 in an empty world using the following commands:

$ roslaunch vehiclesim_gazebo drc_vehicle.launch

or

$ roslaunch vehiclesim_gazebo drc_vehicle_xp900.launch

Turn the steering wheel to the left:

$ rostopic pub --once /drc_vehicle/hand_wheel/cmd std_msgs/Float64 '{ data : 3.14 }'

Turn the steering wheel to the right:

$ rostopic pub --once /drc_vehicle/hand_wheel/cmd std_msgs/Float64 '{ data : -3.14 }'

Press the gas pedal:

$ rostopic pub --once /drc_vehicle/gas_pedal/cmd std_msgs/Float64 '{ data : 1 }'

Disengage hand brake :

$ rostopic pub --once /drc_vehicle/hand_brake/cmd std_msgs/Float64 '{ data : 0 }'

Turn the engine off:

$ rostopic pub --once /drc_vehicle/key/cmd std_msgs/Int8 '{ data : 0 }'

Note: You need to change the topic name "drc_vehicle" to "drc_vehicle_xp900" if you're using xp900 model.

• No namespace found

This issue is due to missing "~/.gazebo/models" folder.

$ cd ~
$ wget -r -R "index\.html*" http://models.gazebosim.org/
$ cd models.gazebosim.org
$ mv * ~/.gazebo/models

• Problem with Indigo and Gazebo 2.2