eurecarr_simulation

A simple ROS based car dynamics simulator.

Install ROS

Follow either of the following.

Melodic with Ubuntu 18.04 is recommended.
Reference: http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu

Using scripts located at etc/ of this repository, depending on you Ubuntu version, run

sudo chmod 755 ./install_ros_melodic && bash ./install_ros_melodic.sh

sudo chmod 755 ./install_ros_kinetic && bash ./install_ros_kinetic.sh

Note, aliases are setup in your ~/.bashrc.
To edit, run gedit ~/.bashrc.

Clone this repository to you local machine.

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/swl017/eurecarr_simulation.git

Run the following command to install all ROS dependencies for the src/ directory.

cd ~/catkin_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y

We need pygame to work with joysticks.

pip install pygame numpy

Note, ROS runs with python 2.x

Open a terminal and launch visualization.

roslaunch eurecarr_simulation simVis.launch

In another terminal, run the node.

rosrun eurecarr_simulation simulate_dynamics.py

If the terminal cannot auto-complete the package (eurecarr_simulation), run the following and try again.
cd ~/catkin_ws
rospack profile

If everything is successfull, you should see the following.

The vehicle is moved because of the initial speed in x direction.

Run the following command
rqt_graph

Publish control(steering and throttle) value to /control topic to test your own self-driving algorithms.

The following applies to controlSubCallback in script/simulate_dynamics.py

variable name	meaning / use in the code	units
`msg.drive.steering_angle`	front wheel angle relative to the car heading	rad
`msg.drive.acceleration`	throttle level	-
`self.inputs[0]`	normalized steer input(min:-1, max:1)	-
`self.inputs[1]`	normalized throttle input(min:-1, max:1)	-

Parameters are located at __init__ of SimulateStep class and main in script/simulate_dynamics.py to try out different settings.
The topics simulation/bodyOdom and simulation/poseOdom are different that the former puts velocities in the body frame and the latter puts velocities in the map frame.
Change the code freely to fit your needs.