ivogeorg/writing_plugins

Writing Gazebo simulator plugins.

writing_plugins

Exercise in writing Gazebo plugins, the brains behind simulated robot behavior :)

Notes

1. Create plugin catkin package with the following requirements:

   catkin_create_pkg writing_plugins gazebo gazebo_ros gazebo_plugins roscpp
   

2. After compilation, add the path to the plugin library (in this case ~/catkin_ws/devel/lib) to the Gazebo plugin path:

   export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=${GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH}:~/catkin_ws/devel/lib
   

3. Resetting the Gazebo simulation time does not reset any counter in the plugin code.
4. Initializing a std::array without with an implicit constructor requres "extra" braces in the init list:

   const std::array<std::pair<int, int>, 4> dir = 
       {{{1, 0}, {0, 1}, {-1, 0}, {0, -1}}};
   

5. Strange problem with almost identical code blocks either crashing Gazebo or not in a_model_plugin.cc.

References

1. Gazebo API SetLinearVel().
2. Gazebo API Reference.
3. Gazebo Model Class Reference.
4. SDF Format Custom elements and attributes.