Fix enviroment system loading mechanism

[arjo129]

🦟 Bug fix

Fixes #

Summary

Currently, there is an issue with the way the Environment loader plugin loads data. In particular it directly writes to the ECM. While this makes sense intuitively, it does not work in practice as the GUI runs on a client process while systems that use it run on the server. This PR fixes this issue by introducing a topic through which the GUI may load Environment Data on the server.

Depends on:

• Adds a message that allows loading environments via a topic gz-msgs#320

TODO:

• This commit breaks the visualization plugin. Fix it so the visualization plugin runs the data sampling off the server plugin.

Signed-off-by: Arjo Chakravarty arjo@openrobotics.org

Checklist

• Signed all commits for DCO
• Added tests
• Updated documentation (as needed)
• Updated migration guide (as needed)
• Consider updating Python bindings (if the library has them)
• codecheck passed (See contributing)
• All tests passed (See test coverage)
• While waiting for a review on your PR, please help review another open pull request to support the maintainers

Note to maintainers: Remember to use Squash-Merge and edit the commit message to match the pull request summary while retaining Signed-off-by messages.

[azeey]

@arjo129 are you actively working on this?

[arjo129]

I have not had any hours to work on this this month. However if I get some time at the end of the week I will probably revisit this. Theres still a fair deal of work needed on the visuallization side and some testing to be done.

[mabelzhang]

Note to self: 1 file left to look at (src/systems/environment_preload/EnvironmentPreload.cc)
Wanted to put in the review to get this going in case I don't have more time rest of the week to look at that file.

How does one test this? I see in gz-sim/examples/worlds, these files exist:
environmental_data.csv
environmental_sensor.sdf
Do those files test this PR?

[azeey]

@arjo129 Do you have time to resolve the conflicts and address any remaining feedback?

[arjo129]

Yep. Should be able to fix this by friday.

[arjo129]

As promised, this is ready for review. CI is failing because we need an upstream release.

I solved the issue where we were unable to load the environment from the empty world. Here is an example of how to use the plugin:
out.webm

First search for Environment Loader. Load the plugin. You will also need the Pointcloud and Environment Visuallization plugins to load the visuallization. Once these panels are loaded simply hit load the example file in (found in the examples/ directory) hit load, set the parameters and then refresh the Pointcloud list.

[iche033]

I notice a couple of issues when testing. Not sure if these are caused by or in the scope of this PR:

1. If I launch gazebo unpaused (with -r) then open the Environment Visualization plugin, the GUI crashes.

   1. gz sim -r environmental_sensor.sdf
   2. Open Environment Visualization gui plugin -> crash

2. I need to have the Environment Visualization and Point Cloud GUI plugins already open before hitting Play to see the point cloud visualization. If I open the Point Cloud GUI plugin after hitting Play, I don't see the visualization.

   1. gz sim environmental_sensor.sdf
   2. Open Environment Visualization gui plugin
   3. Hit Play
   4. Open Point Cloud gui plugin
   5. Click on refresh button in the Point Cloud gui plugin -> No point cloud visualization

[arjo129]

I've fixed issue 1 you mentioned. It was caused by an incorrect access to the session object. The fix does require this pull request though: gazebosim/gz-math#551.

Issue 2 sounds like expected behavior. The reason for this is that the example environment.csv file only has 90 seconds worth of data. So it is likely that by the time you opened the PointCloud plugin the data had run out and hence the plugin stopped publishing data. I've added a gzerr log in e3ed11a that tells you when data has run out.

[azeey]

I think it's best to remove beta from this since it probably won't make it in time for the code freeze. We can merge immediately after.

[iche033]

I've fixed issue 1 you mentioned

Confirmed that issue 1 is fixed!

Issue 2 sounds like expected behavior.

Got it. The error msg popped up as soon as I opened the Environment Visualization plugin. Looking at environmental_data.csv, the timestamp is only up to 1 (presumably seconds) so I see that makes sense.

[iche033]

needs a gz-math7 release.

[iche033]

@osrf-jenkins run tests please

[arjo129]

Let me investigate these tests...I will not be able to address thing immediately. I think we should merge this after code freeze as said by @azeey

[codecov]

Codecov Report

Merging #1842 (4e9be7e) into gz-sim7 (b0ddc34) will decrease coverage by 0.44%.
Report is 58 commits behind head on gz-sim7.
The diff coverage is 53.31%.

❗ Current head 4e9be7e differs from pull request most recent head 9daebc8. Consider uploading reports for the commit 9daebc8 to get more accurate results

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           gz-sim7    #1842      +/-   ##
===========================================
- Coverage    65.01%   64.57%   -0.44%     
===========================================
  Files          353      357       +4     
  Lines        28618    29119     +501     
===========================================
+ Hits         18606    18804     +198     
- Misses       10012    10315     +303     

Files Changed	Coverage Δ
include/gz/sim/EntityComponentManager.hh	100.00% <ø> (ø)
include/gz/sim/Link.hh	100.00% <ø> (ø)
include/gz/sim/Server.hh	100.00% <ø> (ø)
include/gz/sim/Util.hh	100.00% <ø> (ø)
include/gz/sim/rendering/WrenchVisualizer.hh	0.00% <0.00%> (ø)
.../plugins/component_inspector/ComponentInspector.cc	5.57% <0.00%> (-0.05%)	⬇️
.../gui/plugins/transform_control/TransformControl.cc	6.01% <0.00%> (-0.12%)	⬇️
...lization_capabilities/VisualizationCapabilities.cc	3.67% <0.00%> (-0.02%)	⬇️
src/rendering/RenderUtil.cc	36.60% <0.00%> (-2.43%)	⬇️
src/rendering/WrenchVisualizer.cc	0.00% <0.00%> (ø)
... and 34 more

... and 1 file with indirect coverage changes

[iche033]

looks good to me