../_images/tiagopro-icon.png ../_images/kangaroo-icon.png ../_images/tiago-icon.png ../_images/ari-icon.png ../_images/talos-icon.png ../_images/mobile-bases-icon.png

Simulation#

Introduction to Gazebo world environments#

PAL’s robots can be simulated with the Gazebo simulator, that offers a realistic 3D environment for simulating and testing our robots. It is integrated with ROS 2 providing features like accurate physics simulation, sensors emulation and customizable environments.

Several different world environments are provided with PAL’s robots:

  • Empty world is loaded as default when the simulation is launched. The robot spawns in an empty world with no objects, as shown in Figure: Empty world simulated in Gazebo. In order to launch the simulation, the following instruction needs to be executed in a terminal:

    source /opt/pal/${PAL_DISTRO}/setup.bash
    ros2 launch robot_name_gazebo robot_name_gazebo.launch.py
    
    Empty world simulated in Gazebo

    Figure: Empty world simulated in Gazebo#

  • Office world is a simple office world as shown in Figure: Small office world simulated in Gazebo can be launched with the following instruction:

    source /opt/pal/${PAL_DISTRO}/setup.bash
    ros2 launch robot_name_gazebo robot_name_gazebo.launch.py world:=small_office
    
    Small office world simulated in Gazebo

    Figure: Small office world simulated in Gazebo#

  • PAL Gazebo worlds custom worlds are created by PAL Robotics and are also available in the humble distro or can be found at the following link: https://github.com/pal-robotics/pal_gazebo_worlds

PAL robots simulation#

To start TIAGo Pro using the Gazebo simulation run the following command:

source /opt/pal/${PAL_DISTRO}/setup.bash
ros2 launch tiago_pro_gazebo tiago_pro_gazebo.launch.py
TIAGo Pro robot simulated in Gazebo

Figure: TIAGo Pro robot simulated in Gazebo#