JetsonCar-Simulation

Simulation environment for the Jetson Car project using Gazebo and ROS

Cloning

To set up the simulation environment you need to clone the necessary repositories into an existing or new catkin workspace. Follow the steps below to set up a new catkin workspace and clone:

mkdir -p ~/jetsoncar_simulation_ws/src
cd ~/jetsoncar_simulation_ws/src
catkin_init_workspace
git clone https://github.com/mindThomas/JetsonCar-Gazebo
git clone https://github.com/mindThomas/JetsonCar-ROS
git clone https://github.com/mindThomas/realsense_gazebo_plugin
cd ..
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

Building

Build the project with catkin build

cd ~/jetsoncar_simulation_ws
catkin build
source devel/setup.bash

Launch simulation

The Gazebo simulation can be launched with

roslaunch jetsoncar_gazebo gazebo.launch

Reset simulation

The Gazebo simulation/world can be reset without having to restart Gazebo by calling:

rosservice call /gazebo/reset_world

Debugging

View TF frames

Published frames (TF's) can be viewed with (generates a PDF)

rosrun tf view_frames

Convert Xacro to URDF

Another way would be to convert the xacro file to urdf and then urdf_to_graphiz

xacro JetsonCar-Simulation/jetsoncar_description/urdf/jetsoncar.xacro >> jetsoncar.urdf
urdf_to_graphiz jetsoncar.urdf
evince jetsoncar.pdf

Notes

joint_state_publisher is only for testing purposes. A node in a real system or Gazebo for simulation should provide the current actual joint angles by updating all tf's.

Both joint transmission (actuators) and joint controllers will have to be initialized: http://wiki.ros.org/urdf/Tutorials/Using%20a%20URDF%20in%20Gazebo