Overview

This tutorial creates a simulation world with a simple box that is animated in a 10 second repeating loop where it slides around on the ground.

This tutorial also demonstrates several different ways of viewing, accessing, and interacting with simulation using the Gazebo executable or your own custom executable.

The simulated box broadcasts its pose, and a callback is created to receive the pose and print out the location and timestamp of the box.

Setup

Create a working directory.

mkdir ~/gazebo_animatedbox_tutorial
cd ~/gazebo_animatedbox_tutorial

Animate box code

Copy animated_box.cc, independent_listener.cc, integrated_main.cc, CMakeLists.txt, and animated_box.world into the current directory.

On OS X, you can replace wget with curl -OL.

wget http://github.com/osrf/gazebo/raw/gazebo8/examples/stand_alone/animated_box/animated_box.cc
wget http://github.com/osrf/gazebo/raw/gazebo8/examples/stand_alone/animated_box/independent_listener.cc
wget http://github.com/osrf/gazebo/raw/gazebo8/examples/stand_alone/animated_box/integrated_main.cc
wget http://github.com/osrf/gazebo/raw/gazebo8/examples/stand_alone/animated_box/CMakeLists.txt
wget http://github.com/osrf/gazebo/raw/gazebo8/examples/stand_alone/animated_box/animated_box.world

Build the plugin

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make

Make sure Gazebo can load the plugins later

export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=`pwd`:$GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH

Simulate with gazebo

This example demonstrates how to use the normal gazebo executable with a plugin.

Run using gazebo itself with:

cd ~/gazebo_animatedbox_tutorial
gazebo animated_box.world

In another terminal, use "gz topic" user interface to view the pose:

gz topic -v /gazebo/animated_box_world/pose/info

You should see a graphical interface that displays the pose of the box.

Connect to a simulation with your own executable

Make sure Gazebo is not running.

We will start Gazebo as above, and then run the independent listener executable that connects to Gazebo. The independent listener receives the location and timestamp of the box and prints it out.

cd ~/gazebo_animatedbox_tutorial
gazebo animated_box.world & ./build/independent_listener

Run the simulation and connect with your own executable

Make sure Gazebo is not running.

The integrated_main example demonstrates the following:

1. Start the box simulation.
2. Connect a listener to the simulation as part of the same executable.
3. The listener gets the timestamp and pose, then prints each out.

Run integrated_main:

cd ~/gazebo_animatedbox_tutorial
./build/integrated_main animated_box.world

To view the simulation run the command:

gzclient

SOURCE CODE

independent_listener.cc

Executable that will connect to a running simulation, receive updates from the pose information topic, and print the object position.

integrated_main.cc

Executable that will create a simulation, receive updates from the pose information topic, and print the object position.

animated_box.cc

Shared library plugin that defines the animation component of the simulation, moving the box that is in the world.

animated_box.world

XML file that defines the simulation physical world space and the single box that is in it.

CMakeLists.txt

CMake build script.