M E 396 P - Application Programming for Engineers - Fall 2023

Object Herding Simulation

Group G11: Juliana Iverson , Omid Rezayof, Austin Uresti

[email protected] / [email protected] / [email protected]

Package Prequisites

Our project depends on several external packages in order to work.

The following list covers the main packages used. Note that there may be other prequisite packages not already installed on your machine that will need to be installed per package instructions

All software was tested on Ubuntu 20.04.06 Focal Fossa

The following links provide instructions on how to install the prequisite software and packages used in our project onto your computer

Package 1: Robot Operating System Noetic (ROS)

Package 2: Gazebo 11

Package 3: RViz

**IMPORTANT: MAKE SURE YOU INSTALL SOFTWARE FOR NOETIC ROS**

i.e. `sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-rviz`

Package 4: ClearPath Robotics Husky Desktop & Husky Simulator

Package 5: Catkin

Package 6: ROS Joy

Part I: Package Setup

IMPORTANT: run $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash on any new terminal page you open before doing anything else

You will also need the following python modules to be installed to your python3 installation:

Pygame

numpy

1. For Gazebo simulation, please download our world and launch files (new_world_2.world, husky_newworld2.launch, newworld2.launch) and place it in the /opt/ros/noetic/share/husky_gazebo/worlds and the /opt/ros/noetic/share/husky_gazebo/launch directory.

   Note that depending on your user permissions, you may need to execute a sudo copy function in order to copy the file into a protected space

   $ sudo cp ~/Downloads/new_world_2.world ~/opt/ros/noetic/share/husky_gazebo/worlds

   $ sudo cp ~/Downloads/husky_newworld2.launch ~/opt/ros/noetic/share/husky_gazebo/launch

   $ sudo cp ~/Downloads/newworld2.launch ~/opt/ros/noetic/share/husky_gazebo/launch

2. Open a new terminal window, create a catkin workspace, change to the catkin workspace directory, and create your containing package.

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src

   $ cd ~/catkin_ws/src

   $ catkin_create_pkg your_pkg std_msgs rospy geometry_msgs

   $ cd ..

   $ catkin_make

   (For more details on creating a workspace, see the following links: http://wiki.ros.org/catkin/Tutorials/create_a_workspace & http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/CreatingPackage)

3. Open a new terminal window and clone our repository to your local machine

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ git clone https://github.com/OmidRezayof/python_course_project.git ~/catkin_ws/src/your_pkg/src

   or alternatively download all the .py files and place them into the src folder inside your custom package.

4. Return to the catkin workspace directory and run the catkin make function. This compiles the package.

   $ cd ~/catkin_ws/src

   $ catkin_make

5. Your package should now be ready for use.

Part II: Visualization

Pygame Visualization

1. First start with initiating roscore. In a new terminal page type:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ roscore

2. Open another new terminal (shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + T) and start:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ rosrun joy joy_node

   This will run the joy_node node which is for communicating with the controller.

3. Open another new terminal, create a directory for our project and pull our repository. After that, cd to the directory and run:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ python3 goal_loc & python3 dog_loc & python3 obj_loc & python3 pygame_node

   You can use the right thumbstick to move the goal and the left thumbstick to give disturbances to the object.

Gazebo Visualization

1. Open a new terminal window and run:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ export HUSKY_LMS1XX_ENABLED=1

   $ roslaunch husky_gazebo husky_newworld2.launch

Viewing LiDAR & other Robot Vitals

1. Open a new terminal window and run:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ roslaunch husky_viz view_robot.launch

Launching Husky to Goal

1. To run the Husky to Goal algorithm, open a new terminal, cd to your_pkg/src and then run scan1.py and husky_to_goal.py:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   $ cd ~/catkin_ws/src/your_pkg/src

   $ python3 scan1.py & python3 husky_to_goal.py

2. Return to the Gazebo window to view the results

Launching Moving Cylinder Simulation

1. To run the moving cylinder simulation, after opening gazebo, cd to your package's src directory and run comnew.py:

   $ source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

   `$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src/your_pkg/src

   $ python3 comnew.py

2. On a new terminal page, publish a message like this in order to move the cylinder:

   $ rostopic pub -r 10 /cylinder_velocity geometry_msgs/Twist '{linear: {x: 0.5, y: 0.0, z: 0.0}, angular: {x: 0.0,y: 0.0,z: 0.0}}'

3. Return to the Gazebo window to view the results

Presentation Link

This is the link to our presentation, you can find more information on how you can control and play with this objects:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/17h3HP_62Bj14_MxYqViFvrI0khu8-iKaYJdJY8pVOmc/edit?usp=sharing

Resources Used

http://wiki.ros.org/noetic

https://classic.gazebosim.org/

http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/assets/guides/noetic/ros/Drive%20a%20Husky.html#

https://classic.gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=plugins_model

https://www.clearpathrobotics.com/assets/guides/noetic/ros/Creating%20publisher.html

https://www.clearpathrobotics.com/assets/guides/kinetic/husky/CustomizeHuskyConfig.html

http://wiki.ros.org/catkin

http://wiki.ros.org/joy/Tutorials/ConfiguringALinuxJoystick