karst_simulation

Modeling of an exploration robot evolving in a karst

Introduction

Within the project of the Karstic exploration undertaken by LIRMM, it was necessary to set up a simulation to test a new SLAM method using Interval analysis. This github repository allows the simulation of an automnome robot evolving in a Karst. I used the gazebo simulator because it allows to be interfaced with ROS which is a tool widely used in robotics. This simulation was possible thanks to the work of [@Manhaes_2016].

Gazebo

All the physics and visuals run essentially on gazebo

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RVIZ

RVIZ allows the display of the trajectory, the odometry, the camera view and even the mapping made thanks to sonars. It is a very powerful tool for all visualization of sensor data.

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Note

In this Markdown, I explain the installation of each element in an exhaustive way because this repository is created in order to bring together people with different backgrounds around the same formalism. If you have bases in ROS and Gazebo, install this package the way you want.

Dependencies

• ROS Melodic

  First you need to install ROS (I use ROS Melodic but you can install the version you want).

  You need to get ”Desktop-Full Install" so you get Gazebo.

  you can follow the instructions here

• WorkspaceRos

  here is a procedure to configure your ROS workspace:

    mkdir -p ~/workspaceRos/src
    cd ~/workspaceRos
    catkin_make
    echo "source ~/workspaceRos/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
  

• UUV Simulator

  Now we can install the package allowing the simulation of underwater robots:

    sudo apt install ros-melodic-uuv-simulator
  

  Or if you prefer : Installation from source

• The Karst

  The package developed by the research team is very powerful because it has many features. One of them is that you can create your own world, so that you can model it as closely as possible to your own experience. I made my own world in order to recreate a karst.

  To download it you need to go there

• The Simulation with the autonomous robot

  To make the robot autonomous I had to edit the file: waypoints.yaml. Indeed, this file contains different points contained in the cave and the robot follows these points in the order written in the file. So if you create a new cave you'll have to redo a waypoint file.

  To get the simulation go to the terminal and run :

    cd ~/workspaceRos/src
    git clone https://github.com/Paul-antoineLeTolguenec/karst_simulation.git
    cd ~/workspaceRos
    catkin_make
  

Run the simulation

Now that you have all the necessary elements for the simulation, you can run it. Go to the terminal and run :

    roslaunch karst_simulation simulation.launch