About MASCOT

MASCOT is a ROS-Gazebo based multiagent simulation platform developed by Indian Institute of Technology, Dharwad. This package uses the modified plugin from ['tum_simulator'] (http://wiki.ros.org/tum_simulator). MASCOT provides the researchers a standard platform to test their linear as well as non-linear control laws on a Multiagent System.This provides few basics linear and non-linear control law as an example where user can modify and tune the controller. User can write their own control law in basic python. Accesible states are position,velocity, accelertion,orientation of the quadcopter and can publish the force command.Here the quadcopter is modeled as double integrator.Also we have provided a Docker Image for easy usage.

Requirements

This package depends on ROS,Gazebo and few python pacakages.Please follow the below step to install it.

To install ROS please follow an official installation steps ROS. To install the dependent Python Package run the following command.

sudo apt-get install python3-pip -y  
sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip 
sudo apt-get install python3-tk
pip3 install rospkg ## Skip this step if you are using ROS Noetic
pip3 install matplotlib
pip3 install numpy
pip3 install --ignore-installed PyYAML

Download and Compiling

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/Avi241/mascot.git
cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

Use for testing Different Control Laws with Multiple Drone

Open config.yaml located at mascot/scripts. Edit according to you requirements.

Run the lanch file creater program to create a launch file according to your specs. This file generates the robots.launch file for spawning the number of drones with their position as specified in the config.yaml file, it also generates the controller.launch which launches the independent control nodes for each agent. This command should be run after any changes in config.yaml file

rosrun mascot configure.py

Start the Simulation

roslaunch mascot simulation.launch

Initilize the Drones at the specified position

rosrun mascot initialization.py

Start the Controller

roslaunch mascot controller.launch

Leader Position Publisher / Single quadcopter position publisher when using in position control mode

rosrun mascot leader_control.py

Outputs

After Killing the Controller with Ctrl+C the program will automatically save the Plots and Numpy data at the location mascot/scripts/figures and mascot/scripts/numpy_array respectively.

Writing your own control Algorithms

Make the Custom_Control_Law Flag as True in config.yaml file User can write their own control algorithms in the function control_user() located in file mascot/scripts/custom_control.py. Copy of this file is automatically generated for each agent with i as their index so user need to write their algorithm accordingly. Note: The system is developed only for the single leader for now.

Using Docker

We have developed a docker image to avoid any package or system dependencies issues.

Please follow the steps to run a docker image of the simulator.

Install docker using convenience script (Skip this step if you already have docker installed on you system)

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh ./get-docker.sh

Steps to use docker without having to use sudo

sudo groupadd docker
# Add your user to the docker group.
sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
# Close the terminal or restart computer to see effects

Setting up the workspace on users computer

cd ~/
mkdir -p mascot/home

enable access to xhost from the container

xhost +

Run docker and open bash shell

docker run -it --privileged --env="DISPLAY" --env="QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1" -v ~/mascot/home:/home/:rw --volume="/tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix:rw" -p 14556:14556/udp --name=mascot avi241/mascot-sim bash

Try running the Program

gazebo

If this shows any error follow the below step if gazebo opens successfully Please move to usage step.

If system uses LibGL as a Graphics driver there won't be any error. For the systems using Nvidia as a Graphcis Driver please follow the below step.

install ubuntu drivers

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-drivers-common

check your Nvidia drivers

export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
export LANG=C.UTF-8
sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

Install Nvidia drivers

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

Try running gazebo again

gazebo

Basic Docker Commands

start docker container

docker start project

stop the container

docker stop project

remove the container

docker rm project

list container

docker container ls -a # -a is for all whether container is running or not

list docker images

docker image ls -a

remove image

docker image rm tiryoh/ros-melodic-desktop

open a new bash shell of this container

docker exec -it project bash

Avi241/mascot