Graphical application built with Qt used to control simulated Autonomous Underwater Vehicles with Gazebo and ROS. It was created to provide a realistic scenario emulating the real usage of rmw_desert, in order to demonstrate the feasibility of controlling underwater robots using acoustic wireless signals.
NOTE: Do not try to run a Gazebo simulation in a virtual machine, it will not work properly!
To properly install the middleware layer used to communicate with DESERT through ROS applications and all its components you have to read the wiki available in the corresponding github repository.
Before proceeding make sure you have completed the instructions in the following sections:
- DESERT Framework
- Robot Operating System
- Building the module
Different packages are required to build this application.
-
First install Qt6
sudo apt install qt6-base-dev qt6-tools-devor alternatively Qt5
sudo apt install qtbase5-dev qttools5-dev -
Install Gazebo
sudo apt install gz-ionic ros-rolling-ros-gz -
And finally install gz-transport version 14 using the tutorial.
Gazebo supports basic simulation of underwater vehicles, using the equations described in Fossen's "Guidance and Control of Ocean Vehicles". This tutorial will guide you through the steps you need to setup simulation of an underwater vehicle.
Note that the page refers to gazebo version 8, but since we are supposed to work with the ROS release codenamed rolling, the installation command reported above will download gazebo version 9.
To prevent incompatibilities just replace the word gz-sim8 with gz-sim9 in the tutorial.
To build this application you just need to clone the repository and then run cmake.
git clone https://github.com/dcostan/AUV_controller.git
Move inside the AUV_controller directory.
cmake .
make
If no errors occured you should have a binary file compiled that you can run with the command below.
./AUV_controller
Now you have the controller application that implements a ROS node and a simulated AUV vehicle in Gazebo representing the other node. The simulator has its own method to process topics, so you have to launch the ros_gz_bridge tool to convert Gazebo data streams in the ROS standard, enabling a bidirectional communication.
Open a terminal in the folder of this repository and type the following.
ns uwApplicationTCPwithPosition.tcl
On another terminal in the same folder run the bridge.
RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_desert DESERT_PORT=4000 ros2 launch ros_gz_bridge ros_gz_bridge.launch.py name:=ros_gz_bridge config_file:=ros_gz_bridge.yaml bridge_name:=auv_bridge
In this way, when you open the Gazebo simulation, the application will automatically catch the signals coming from ROS and it will send them to the AUV to control its actuators.
In order to deploy a working underwater simulation you have to open four different terminal windows, each of which are on the directory of this repository.
-
In the first one run the underwater network simulation
ns uwApplicationTCPwithPosition.tcl -
In the second one start Gazebo
gz sim ~/gazebo_maritime/worlds/buoyant_lrauv.sdf -
In the third one launch the ros-gz bridge
RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_desert DESERT_PORT=4000 ros2 launch ros_gz_bridge ros_gz_bridge.launch.py name:=ros_gz_bridge config_file:=ros_gz_bridge.yaml bridge_name:=auv_bridge -
In the fourth one execute the controller
RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_desert DESERT_PORT=5000 ./AUV_controller
If you run them at the same time you will end up with a controller interface that can manage the AUV joints using acoustic undewater communications through the DESERT protocols stack. Note that the last two terminals contain the nodes involved in this scenario, and each of them is associated to a different TCP port as described in the TCL source.