The Aerial Alter-EGO Simulator is based on RotorS(https://github.com/ethz-asl/rotors_simulator).

This simulator is compatible with the Aerial Alter-EGO onboard software(https://github.com/NMMI/aerial-alter-ego)

Installation Instructions - Ubuntu 20.04 with ROS Noetic

1. Install and initialize ROS Noetic desktop full, additional ROS packages, catkin-tools, and wstool:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu `lsb_release -sc` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
$ wget http://packages.ros.org/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-desktop-full ros-noetic-joy ros-noetic-octomap-ros ros-noetic-mavlink python-wstool python-catkin-tools protobuf-compiler libgoogle-glog-dev ros-noetic-control-toolbox ros-noetic-mavros
$ sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-ros-control ros-noetic-ros-controllers
$ sudo rosdep init
$ rosdep update
$ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

2. If you don't have ROS workspace yet you can do so by

$ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ catkin_init_workspace  # initialize your catkin workspace
$ wstool init

3. Get the simulator and additional dependencies

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ git clone [email protected]:NMMI/aerial-alter-ego-simulator.git
$ git clone [email protected]:ethz-asl/mav_comm.git
$ git clone [email protected]:ethz-asl/glog_catkin.git
$ git clone [email protected]:catkin/catkin_simple.git

Note if you want to use wstool you can replace the above commands with bash wstool set --git local_repo_name [email protected]:organization/repo_name.git and then do bash wstool update.

4. Build your workspace with python_catkin_tools (therefore you need python_catkin_tools)

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin init
$ catkin build

5. Add sourcing to your .bashrc file

$ echo "source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

Gazebo Version

Gazebo 11.x is recommanded as a combination with ROS Noetic. Reference: http://gazebosim.org/tutorials/?tut=ros_wrapper_versions

Basic Usage

Launch the simulator

$ roslaunch aerial-ego-simulation yigle_hovering.launch

The control command is received from the onboard software(https://github.com/NMMI/aerial-alter-ego).

Or we can send the commands through ROS topic:

Left arm joint0 position command(in rad):

$ rostopic pub /yigle/joint0_position_controller_left/command std_msgs/Float64 "data: 0.0" 

Neck joint1 position command(in rad):

$ rostopic pub /yigle/joint_position_controller_neck_1/command std_msgs/Float64 "data: 0.0" 

Drone velocity commands:

vx topic: /RH_joy_y, unit: 0.1*m/s

vy topic: /RH_joy_x, unit: 0.1*m/s

vz topic: /LH_joy_y, unit: 0.1*m/s

yawrate topic: /LH_joy_x, unit: 0.1*rad/s

i.e. let vz be 0.1m/s:

rostopic pub /LH_joy_y std_msgs/Float64 "data: 1.0"