Ekumen-OS / andino_webots

Webots simulation of the Andino robot fully integrated with ROS 2

🐞 Andino Webots Simulation

📋 Description

This package provides a simulation environment for Andino in Webots using webots_ros2 to integrate it with ROS 2.

Webots uses PROTO as their robot description format, while the Andino robot description is written in URDF format.
The urdf2webots package provides a tool to convert a URDF robot description to a Webots-compatible proto file. This tool is used by the webots_ros2 package to convert the robot description in runtime.

🗜️ Platforms

• ROS 2: Humble Hawksbill
• OS:
  • Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

📥 Installation

This package makes use of some packages from https://github.com/Ekumen-OS/andino repository. Therefore, the repository is brought as a git submodule. For so, when cloning this repository make sure to also init the submodules, this can be done adding a --recursive flag to the git clone command

1. Clone this repository

git clone [e-mail]:ekumenlabs/andino_webots.git --recursive

2. Set up docker environment: Refer to docker readme

Once the container is running and dependencies have been installed you can proceed to package building.

📦 Build

The package contains some dependencies that must be installed in order to build it:

rosdep install --from-paths src -i -y

Then build the package and source the install workspace. To do so run the following commands:

colcon build
source install/setup.bash

🚀 Usage

Start empty simulation

Once the package is built and sourced, you can start an empty simulation by running the following ROS 2 launch file:

ros2 launch andino_webots launch_webots_world.launch.py world:=andino_webots

This launch file starts an empty simulation in a world given by the world argument. This argument defines the wbt file of the world where andino will run. It should be present in the package's world folder.
Defaults to: andino_webots.

Spawn andino in a webots_ros2 simulation

To spawn an Andino to a running webots_ros2 simulation you may run a separate launchfile:

ros2 launch andino_webots spawn_andino_webots.launch.py

This launch file supports the following launch arguments:

• use_sim_time . Parameter to indicate to the robot controller to synchronize with simulation time. Defaults to true.
• rsp . Parameter to decide whether to spawn the robot state publisher node or not. Defaults to true.

Start an Andino Webots simulation

Alternatively you can launch the simulation along with the robot by running the andino_webots.launch.py launchfile, which includes both previous commands:

ros2 launch andino_webots andino_webots.launch.py

This launchfile accepts all previous arguments, with the addition of the choice to run a custom plugin to remove nodes from a robot in the simulation:

• remove_nodes . Decide whether to run the NodeRemover plugin, which removes specific nodes from a robot in the simulation. The parameters for this plugin can be set in the node_remover_plugin.urdf file in the package. Defaults to 'true'.

🕹️ Teleoperate Andino in Webots

The robot is connected to the webots_ros2_control plugin, that enables teleoperation by requesting commands via /cmd_vel; so, out of the box, the package is ready to accept velocity commands.

📷 Sensors

The package automatically creates a ROS 2 interface for Andino sensors, exposing its readings to a topic at a given refresh rate. The parameters to configure this interface are defined in the andino_webots.urdf description file.

🔧 Webots plugins

NodeRemover plugin

The NodeRemover is a custom webots_ros2 Supervisor plugin that allows users to modify the simulation in runtime by removing specific nodes from a given Robot.

The associated launchfile spawns a Supervisor robot in a running simulation and attaches the node_remover_plugin to it, which takes in a robot's name and list of the nodes to be removed as parameters.
It's provided in this package as an example of the tool's capabilities, as well as a means of providing a workaround for urdf2webots not having a straightforward way to generate a free rotating joint, removing the caster's motor Nodes.

🙌 Contributing

Issues or PRs are always welcome! Please refer to CONTRIBUTING doc.

Code development

Note that a Docker folder is provided for easy setting up the workspace.