ROS-Gazebo Simulation

A simplt ROS-Gazebo simulation

Environment Dependence

Both Ubuntu 16.04 + ros-kinetic and Ubuntu 18.04 + ros-melodic is compatible.

To install ROS:

sudo apt install ros-<distro>-desktop-full

We need ROS-Gazebo interface and controller packages:

sudo apt install ros-<distro>-gazebo-ros-pkgs ros-<distro>-gazebo-ros-control ros-<distro>-ros-controllers

After git clone please change the name of the directory mv ROS-Gazebo-Simulation exoskeleton

Launch the Simulation

Firstly, copy the directory exoskeleton to your catkin_ws/src

Launch the exoskeleton model:

roslaunch exoskeleton world.launch paused:=true

Launch the rqt_gui for control and tuning parameter:

roslaunch exoskeleton rqt.launch

upper half for publish joint command. lower half for reconfigure joint controller PID parameters. (Default is {p: 100, i: 0.01, d: 10} configured in config/control.yaml)

ROS Topic

Totally seven links:

waist_link LU_link RU_link LD_link RD_link LF_link RF_link

Totally six joints:

LU_joint RU_joint LD_joint RD_joint LF_joint RF_joint

L for left, R for right, U for up, D for down, F for foot e.g. LU_link => left up link(left thigh)

Joint position controller:

/exoskeleton/LU_position_controller/command

Link IMU plug-in topic:

/imu/LINKNAME

Mechanical Parameter

See in urdf/robot.xacro It's a very simple model. It can not keep balance without control.

Gazebo Tips

Since without control, the robot model is vety easy to fall down.
It may be useful to press space to pause the simualtion and ctrl-r to reset world.