Vortex AUV simulator: Gazebo UUV simulator rebuilt for Vortex NTNU purposes

Prerequisites

Because of a change in uuv-simulator between Melodic and Noetic, this repo will stay Melodic for the time being. To run it locally, you would then need Ubuntu 18.04 and Melodic. Since vortex-auv is dependent on python3 and Noetic, this is not feasible in practice. Instead, use Docker and Compose.

To do anything useful with the simulator, you will need the vortex-auv repository on your machine as well. The nodes in vortex-auv will interact with the simulator and allow us to perform integration tests without needing the physical vessels and a real-world testing facility.

1. Launch the simulator with Docker Compose

If you have cloned this repo already, simply use

docker compose up

(or docker-compose up if you are still on V1) after navigating to the folder containing the compose file.

If you instead wish to run the simulator without needing to clone the repo, use the command

docker run --rm --privileged -it --network=host --user vortex -e DISPLAY=":0" ghcr.io/vortexntnu/vortex-auv-simulator:development

2. Customize the simulator

---

The section below outlines the various options you can set to customize/change the simulation environment. These are currently not settable from outside the docker container, so to proceed with these steps, you will have to override the entrypoint of the simulator container, by adding

entrypoint: ["/bin/bash", "-l"]

to the bottom of the docker-compose.yml file.

You may now run

docker compose up -d

then

docker compose exec vortex-simulator bash

You should now have a shell attached to the simulator container. Since we overwrote the entrypoint, you will now need to launch the simulator manually:

Method 1. Using different launch files

1. Open a new terminal and launch a simulation. This will upload Manta (w/ sensor, camera, thrusters etc.), start the simulation world, upload any other object models, and launch robot localization i.e :

   roslaunch simulator_launch cybernetics_sim.launch

Builtin simulator worlds:

• basin_sim.launch
• cybernetics_sim.launch
• robosub2019_sim.launch
• robosub2022_sim.launch

ROS launch arguments:

Argument	Type	Default	Description
gui	bool	true	Enable/Disable Gazebo GUI
camerafront	bool	true	Enable/Disable Front Camera view
cameraunder	bool	false	Enable/Disable Under AUV Camera view
paused	bool	false	Enable to start the Simulation Paused
set_timeout	bool	false	Enable timeout of Simulation (stop runtime)
timeout	float	0.0	Set the runtime period (only if set_timeout is true)

Method 2. Using combined Simulator and AUV-modules launch file

1. This will upload Manta (w/ sensor, camera, thrusters etc.), start the simulation world, upload any other object models, launch robot localization, start webViz server, AND launch all the modules required for operating Manta. i.e :

   roslaunch simulator_launch combined_launch.launch

To choose a different simulator world, use ROS launch argument 'pool'. Builtin pools:

• basin_pool
• cybernetics_pool
• robosub2019_pool
• robosub2022_pool

ROS launch arguments:

Argument	Type	Default	Description
pool	string	cybernetics_pool	Choose the Simulator World
gui	bool	true	Enable/Disable Gazebo GUI
camerafront	bool	true	Enable/Disable Front Camera view
cameraunder	bool	false	Enable/Disable Under AUV Camera view
paused	bool	false	Enable to start the Simulation Paused
set_timeout	bool	false	Enable timeout of Simulation (stop runtime)
timeout	float	0.0	Set the runtime period (only if set_timeout is true)

2. Execute your state machine of choice. i.e:

   roslaunch finite_state_machine simtest.launch

Builtin finite state machines:

• simtest.launch
• pooltest.launch
• go_to_and_inspect_point.launch

Method 3. Using Shell (bash) scripts

Shell-launch scripts can be used when the intention is to launch Gazebo Simulator, AUV modules, and a Finite State Machine (FSM) simultaneously. It spares a bit of time in case of repeated launches, and requires only a single terminal to launch everything.

1. Go to the simualator folder and mark the scripts as executables (only needs to be done once):

   cd vortex_ws/src/Vortex-Simulator/launch_scripts_bash
   chmod u+r+x sim_launch_basic.sh sim_launch_fsm.sh sim_launch_fsm2.sh comb_launch_fsm.sh comb_launch_fsm2.sh

2. Execute a launch script (must start from the same folder or using a full path). i.e:

   ./sim_launch_basic.sh

Available launch scripts and descriptions:

Launch script	Description
sim_launch_basic.sh	Equals starting the Simulator using method 1
sim_launch_fsm.sh	As above, and automatically kills ALL ROS launches and ALL Gazebo runtimes when the FSM terminates
sim_launch_fsm2.sh	As above, but only kills launches and runtimes if the FSM terminates cleanly
comb_launch_fsm.sh	Equals starting the Simulator using method 2, automatically kills the Simulator and AUV modules when the FSM terminates
comb_launch_fsm2.sh	As above, but only stops the simulator and runtimes if the FSM terminates cleanly

Script CLI arguments:

Argument	Type	Default	Description
-w or --world	string	cybernetics_sim	(only sim_launch_... scripts) Choose a simulator world
--pool	string	cybernetics_pool	(only comb_launch_... scripts) Choose a simulator pool
--fsm	string	simtest	Choose a finite state machine
-g or --gui	bool	true	Enable/Disable Gazebo client (GUI)
-f or --camerafront	bool	true	Enable/Disable Front Camera view
-u or --cameraunder	bool	false	Enable/Disable Under AUV Camera view
-p or --paused	bool	false	Enable to start the Simulation Paused
--set_timeout	bool	false	Enable timeout of Simulation (stop runtime)
-t or --timeout	float	0.0	Set the runtime period (set_timeout must be true)
-s or --sleep	int	3 (sim_launch_... scripts) 5 (comb_launch_... scripts)	Time period between different ROS launches

Credits

This package contains plugins to allow simulating UUVs with Gazebo. For installation and usage instructions, please refer to the documentation pages. To send questions, report bugs or suggest improvements, please use the Issues page.

If you are using this simulator for your publication, please cite:

@inproceedings{Manhaes_2016,
	doi = {10.1109/oceans.2016.7761080},
	url = {https://doi.org/10.1109%2Foceans.2016.7761080},
	year = 2016,
	month = {sep},
	publisher = {{IEEE}},
	author = {Musa Morena Marcusso Manh{\~{a}}es and Sebastian A. Scherer and Martin Voss and Luiz Ricardo Douat and Thomas Rauschenbach},
	title = {{UUV} Simulator: A Gazebo-based package for underwater intervention and multi-robot simulation},
	booktitle = {{OCEANS} 2016 {MTS}/{IEEE} Monterey}
}

In you are willing to contribute to this package, please check the instructions in CONTRIBUTING

Purpose of the project

This software is a research prototype, originally developed for the EU ECSEL Project 662107 SWARMs.

The software is not ready for production use. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards (e.g. ISO 26262).

License

UUV Simulator is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

For a list of other open source components included in UUV Simulator, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.txt.