Swerve Sim Container

Dockerized gazebo simulation of a swerve drive robot in the AWS Robomaker Small Warehouse World.

What is a swerve-drive?

Swerve-drive is drive-train with independently steerable and driven wheels. This allows the robot to be omnidirectional. A swerve drive robot can spin on the spot, strafe sideways and perform more complex motions which are not possible with diff-drive or ackermann steering. Swerve-drive robots can have 3 or more wheels. This simulation exhibits a robot with four wheel independent steering.

For more details and derivation of swerve-drive kinematics and odometry, check out the blog post.

Watch the simulated swerve-drive robot in action on Youtube.

Dependencies

• Docker
• make ($ sudo apt-get build-essential on ubuntu)
• x11 (to run gazebo application windows)
• (Optional) - Nvidia Container Toolkit

Instructions to run

1. Clone the repo

   $ git clone https://github.com/freshrobotics/swerve-sim-container.git
   $ cd swerve-sim-container
   

2. Pull or Build sim image

   # Pull image from github container repository
   $ make pull
   

   # Locally build image
   $ make build
   

3. Launch sim

   # Without Nvidia GPU
   $ make launch
   

   # With Nvidia GPU
   $ make launch-gpu
   

4. (Optional) Launch teleop nodes

   # Keyboard Teleop
   $ make teleop-keyboard
   
   # Joystick Teleop
   $ make teleop-joy
   

Additional Utilities

1. make run or make run-gpu - Run container with shell.
2. make shell - Attach shell to the running container.
3. make stop - Stop running container.

License

This repo is Apache-2.0 licensed.