Looking for suggestions and help on a basic robot model to teach the basics of ROS using Gazebo.

Hello,

I'm looking for a basic robot model to use to teach some basics on how to use ROS and Gazebo. I was hoping to find something simple like a small differential drive robot with just a couple basic sensors and maybe some lights that could be turned on and off.

As far as sensors go, I was hoping for something basic like an obstacle detection sensor and possibly something similar to GPS.

I know this robot could probably be easily built, but I've never created a model from scratch before, and I don't have the time to do so on this one.

I have looked for solutions and found Turtlebot and the iCreate Roomba robot. The Turtlebot seemed a little advanced for my needs. The iCreate looked promissing, but I haven't been able to get the sensors working. I loaded the model from the command line from the models repository that I found on bitbucket. I can move it and control it, but there is no topic for the sensors. I'm not sure what I'm missing there.

Most of my experience has been with the AR Drone model which was created by someone else and I just loaded it into my world and everything was working.

Any help of suggestions? Thanks.

Asked by lucas on 2016-07-18 13:41:22 UTC

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Answers

For the Gazebo side, you could look into the beginner tutorial series as a starter. It goes through the process of creating a basic diff drive mobile robot with a depth sensor and a plugin which makes it follow the closest object in front of it. The beginner tutorials don't go into the details of how to write the plugin, and don't use ROS..

The intermediate tutorial series goes into the details of writing a model plugin and conecting to ROS, but they don't direct follow the beginner tutorials.

I hope these give you some ideas ;)

Asked by chapulina on 2016-07-18 13:56:31 UTC