Hummingbird Gazebo Simulator

Hummingbird is a MAV gazebo simulator modified and forked from ethz-asl/rotors_simulator.

There are simulated sensors coming with the simulator such as an IMU, a generic odometry sensor, and the VI-Sensor, which can be mounted on the multirotor. This package also contains some example controllers, basic worlds, and example launch files.

Installation Instructions - Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic

1. Install additional ROS packages, catkin-tools, and wstool:

$ sudo apt install python3-catkin-tools
$ sudo apt install libgoogle-glog-dev
$ sudo apt install ros-noetic-octomap-ros ros-noetic-octomap-msgs
$ sudo apt install ros-noetic-mavros
$ sudo apt install ros-noetic-velodyne-gazebo-plugins

2. If you don't have ROS workspace yet you can do so by

$ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ catkin_init_workspace  # initialize your catkin workspace
$ wstool init
$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/duynamrcv/hummingbird_simulator/master/rotors_hil.rosinstall
$ wstool merge rotors_hil.rosinstall
$ wstool update
$ rm -r rotors_hil.rosinstall

3. Build your workspace with python_catkin_tools (therefore you need python_catkin_tools)

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin build -j4 # Use 4 threats

4. Add sourcing to your .bashrc file

$ echo "source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

Basic Usage

Launch the simulator with a quadrotor helicopter model named Hummingbird in a basic world.

$ roslaunch rotors_gazebo mav_hovering_example.launch

Note The first run of gazebo might take considerably long, as it will download some models from an online database. Should you receive a timeout error, try running gazebo by itself (e.g. roslaunch gazebo_ros empty_world.launch ) so it has sufficient time to actually download all of the models.

The simulator starts by default in paused mode. To start it you can either

• use the Gazebo GUI and press the play button

• or you can send the following service call.

  $ rosservice call gazebo/unpause_physics
  

There are some basic launch files where you can load the different multicopters with additional sensors. They can all be found in ~/catkin_ws/src/ummingbird_simulator/rotors_gazebo/launch.

The world_name argument looks for a .world file with a corresponding name in ~/catkin_ws/src/hummingbird_simulator/rotors_gazebo/worlds. By default, all launch files, with the exception of those that have the world name explicitly included in the file name, use the empty world described in basic.world.

Send direct motor commands

We will for now just send some constant motor velocities to the multicopter.

$ rostopic pub /hummingbird/command/motor_speed mav_msgs/Actuators '{angular_velocities: [100, 100, 100, 100]}'

Note The size of the motor_speed array should be equal to the number of motors you have in your model of choice (e.g. 4 in the Hummingbird model).

Subterranean scenario for exploration

Original version of Rotors Simulator

Learn more and discover original version in RotorS' wiki for more instructions and examples (https://github.com/ethz-asl/rotors_simulator/wiki). Please cite the original version:

@Inbook{Furrer2016,
author="Furrer, Fadri
and Burri, Michael
and Achtelik, Markus
and Siegwart, Roland",
editor="Koubaa, Anis",
chapter="RotorS---A Modular Gazebo MAV Simulator Framework",
title="Robot Operating System (ROS): The Complete Reference (Volume 1)",
year="2016",
publisher="Springer International Publishing",
address="Cham",
pages="595--625",
isbn="978-3-319-26054-9",
doi="10.1007/978-3-319-26054-9_23",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26054-9_23"
}