ABP-Simulation-Platform

This repository is dedicated to the development and simulation of floatbots (or satlets) on the air-bearing platform of the Space Engineering Research Center (SERC). SERC is a subsidiary of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California (USC).

Getting Started

System Recommendations

• Ubuntu 18.04.5 - Bionic Beaver
• ROS Melodic
• Gazebo 9.15
  • Follow Alternative Instructions to get 9.15 instead of 9.0

Building and Configuring Path

Create a fork of this repository and then clone your fork to your local machine. To ensure ROS is in your environment run:

echo 'source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Next let's build this repository as an ROS workspace. If you cloned the repository into your home directory:

cp ~/ABP-Simulation-Platform
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

Now to add the repository's packages permanently to your path:

echo 'source $HOME/Desktop/ABP-Simulation-Platform/devel/setup.bash' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Lastly, to ensure the robot models are in your path:

echo 'export GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=/home/kirby/Desktop/ABP-Simulation-Platform/src/abp_sim/models' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Running a Toy Simulation

cd src/abp_sim/
./abp 3 --toy --build

If everything is installed properly, you should initially see three floatboats at rest as seen in the above image.

Troubleshooting

If you run into issues with Gazebo or ROS, see the following links as starting points:

• Roslaunch with Gazebo
• Model is Invisible in Gazebo
• Spawning Multiple Robots in Gazebo with ROS