iRobot® Create® 3 Simulator

This is a ROS 2 simulation stack for the iRobot® Create® 3 robot. Only Gazebo Harmonic is supported.

Have a look at the Create® 3 documentation for more details on the ROS 2 interfaces exposed by the robot.

Prerequisites

Required dependencies:

1. ROS 2 Jazzy
2. ROS 2 dev tools:
   • colcon-common-extensions
   • rosdep: Used to install dependencies when building from sources
   • vcs: Automates cloning of git repositories declared on a YAML file.

Besides the aforementioned dependencies you will also need Gazebo Harmonic.

Gazebo Harmonic

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wget
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ros-gz

Build

• Create a workspace if you don't already have one:

mkdir -p ~/create3_ws/src

• Clone this repository into the src directory from above.

• Clone the irobot_create_msgs repository into the workspace

• Navigate to the workspace and install ROS 2 dependencies with:

cd ~/create3_ws
sudo apt-get update
rosdep install --from-path src -yi

• Build the workspace with:

colcon build --symlink-install
source install/local_setup.bash

Run

Gazebo Harmonic

Create® 3 can be spawned in a demo world in Gazebo and monitored through RViz with

ros2 launch irobot_create_gz_bringup create3_gz.launch.py

The spawn point can be changed with the x, y, z and yaw launch arguments:

ros2 launch irobot_create_gz_bringup create3_gz.launch.py x:=1.0 y:=0.5 yaw:=1.5707

Namespacing

A namespace can be applied to the robot using the namespace launch argument:

ros2 launch irobot_create_gz_bringup create3_gz.launch.py namespace:=my_robot

Multiple robots can be spawned with unique namespaces:

ros2 launch irobot_create_gz_bringup create3_gz.launch.py namespace:=robot1
ros2 launch irobot_create_gz_bringup create3_spawn.launch.py namespace:=robot2 x:=1.0

⚠️ create3_gz.launch.py should only be used once as it launches the Ignition simulator itself. Additional robots should be spawned with create3_spawn.launch.py. Namespaces and spawn points should be unique for each robot.

Package layout

This repository contains packages for both the Classic and Ignition Gazebo simulators:

• irobot_create_common Packages common to both Classic and Ignition

  • irobot_create_common_bringup Launch files and configurations
  • irobot_create_control Launch control nodes
  • irobot_create_description URDF and mesh files describing the robot
  • irobot_create_nodes Nodes for simulating robot topics and motion control
  • irobot_create_toolbox Tools and helpers for creating nodes and plugins

• irobot_create_gz Packages used for the Gazebo Harmonic Simulator

  • irobot_create_gz_bringup Launch files and configurations
  • irobot_create_gz_plugins GUI plugins
  • irobot_create_gz_sim Metapackage
  • irobot_create_gz_toolbox Sensor and interface nodes