gazebo_tasks

A lof ot the work here should be credited to Krasimir Georgiev for his final undergraduate project that I helped to co-supervise.

If you are using this dataset, please cite: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8206372

@inproceedings{abelha2017learning,
title={Learning How a Tool Affords by Simulating 3D Models from the Web},
author={Abelha Ferreira, Paulo and Guerin, Frank},
booktitle={Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2017)},
year={2017},
organization={IEEE Press}
}

Gazebo simulation of 5 everyday tasks for robotics

By Paulo Abelha

This repository is part of my PhD. It contains the code and files for simulating 5 everyday tasks in Gazebo. This was only tested on Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04, but should work in other versions.

I suggest you follow these installation steps for Gazebo in order to run the rest of my code that connects to Gazebo.

0. Dependencies for compiling the tasks:

• 0.0 Update packages:
  • sudo apt-get update
• 0.1 Install cmake:
  • sudo apt-get install cmake
• 0.1 Install libprotobuf:
  • sudo apt-get install protobuf-compiler
  • sudo apt-get install libprotobuf-dev
  • sudo apt-get install libprotobuf-c-dev

1. Set up Gazebo

• 1.1) Follow: http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_ubuntu
• 1.2) Gazebo will create a hidden folder ~/.gazebo in your home
• 1.3) Create a new directory called 'gazebo_models':
  • mkdir ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models
• 1.4) Run Gazebo to check everything is okay:
  • gazebo (this should open gazebo an empty world)
• 1.5) Close Gazebo
• 1.6) Add the cafe_table model to the gazebo models folder
  • cp -r ~/gazebo_tasks/cafe_table ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/cafe_table

2. Set up a task (TASK_NAME is the name of the task you want to set up (e.g. scooping_grains))

• 2.1) Open your bashrc file
  • gedit ~/.bashrc &
• 2.2) Add the following two lines as new lines at the end of bashrc file
  • export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=${GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH}:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/plugins/build
  • export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=${GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH}:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME
  • 2.2.1) Please make sure you add ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models: to the beggining of the model path
• 2.3) Save and close your file. Now source it
  • source ~/.bashrc
• 2.4) For every task you will need to add its model and code path, spearating with ':'
  • export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=${GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH}:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/plugins/build::~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME2/plugins/build
  • export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=${GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH}:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME:~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME2
• 2.5) Copy the task folder from this repository for TASK_NAME to the gazebo_models folder
  • cp -r ~/gazebo_tasks/TASK_NAME ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME
• 2.6) Remove the build directory inside the task folder
  • rm -r ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/plugins/build
• 2.7) Create a new build directory inside the task folder
  • mkdir ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/plugins/build
• 2.8) Go inside the build folder
  • cd ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/plugins/build
• 2.9) Build the task code and create make files
  • cmake ..
• 2.10) Compile the task code
  • make

3. Run a simulation

• 3.1) Go to the task folder cd ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME
• 3.2) Run the simulation for the demo tool that goes with the repository gazebo -u TASK_NAME.world --verbose
  • (-u will make Gazebo start paused)
  • (--verbose is nice to show you any problems with finding paths, installation etc.)
• 3.3) Check the file to see parameters and models loaded
  • gedit ~/.gazebo/gazebo_models/TASK_NAME/TASK_NAME.world &

Good simulating! :)