sky_simulator

Introduction

Welcome to the documentation for our game project developed by a university group. In this project, we're integrating various technologies including a joystick, ESP8266, an FPGA board, and Gazebo for a graphical interface. My responsibility in the project is to handle the ESP8266 and PC integration via MQTT, and to control the motion of a virtual drone in Gazebo using ROS 1.

This module handles just the communication of the virtual drone with the movement, collision, init, end and choice of world to play signals. To see the full project, visit this repository, where the FPGA and ESP32 files are at. To know more about the construction of the drone, see this documentation of the progress in gazebo community.

Project Overview

The game is based on maneuvering a drone to avoid obstacles on a map displayed in Gazebo. We're utilizing Gazebo's collision detection capabilities to enhance gameplay.

Install and setup

Setup Instructions

To set up and run the project, follow these steps:

1. Install Mosquitto MQTT Broker: Install a local Mosquitto MQTT broker to facilitate communication between components. Follow the installation instructions for Ubuntu. It does not need to be secure enough. A basic local mosquitto broker will do.

2. Workspace Setup: First, you need to set up the sky_simulator workspace. Clone the workspace repository and follow the setup instructions provided there.

3. Get the items: you will need a joystick and an ESP32. Upload the .cpp file to the ESP32 (to do), connecting to your personal Wi-Fi and broker (IP Adress of the local host). You PC with Ubuntu and the mosquitto broker needs to be connected to the same WiFi network as the ESP32. In case you are in doubt what IP it is, just type the command in the Ubuntu terminal hostname -I. The first IP is your broker's IP.

Cloning this Repository

To clone this repository, and all of its submodules, use the following command:

git clone --recursive [email protected]:hmoyen/sky_simulator.git

1. Ardupilot

Head to the Ardupilot fork submodule and install the required dependencies.

cd sky_simulator/src/sim_base/ardupilot/
Tools/environment_install/install-prereqs-ubuntu.sh -y
. ~/.profile
sudo pip3 install mavproxy

Then, set the ardupilot path on your .bashrc

echo "export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/sky_simulator/src/sim_base/ardupilot/Tools/autotest" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Now that Ardupilot is installed, let's install ROS Noetic

2. ROS Noetic

Follow the instructions here: http://wiki.ros.org/noetic/Installation/Ubuntu

Remember to add the source command to your bashrc file:

echo "source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

If you already have other ROS distros, be sure to remove their source commands from the bashrc file.

3. Gazebo 11

First, uninstall other versions of Gazebo:

sudo apt remove <other-gazebo-versions>

Follow the alternative installation: https://classic.gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_ubuntu&cat=install

Add a line to end of ~/.bashrc by running the following command:

echo "source /usr/share/gazebo/setup.sh" >> ~/.bashrc

4. Install Ardupilot Gazebo plugin

First, head to the the ardupilot_gazebo submodule, inside of the sky_base repository.

cd sky_simulator/src/sim_base/gz_ws/src/ardupilot_gazebo

Then, build the plugin

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make -j4
sudo make install

If you want to see the complete guide: https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/sitl-with-gazebo-legacy.html#sitl-with-gazebo-legacy

5. Setup Catkin Workspace

Install the following catkin tools:

sudo apt-get install python3-wstool python3-rosinstall-generator python3-catkin-lint python3-pip python3-catkin-tools
pip3 install osrf-pycommon

Then, initialize the catkin workspace:

cd ~/sky_simulator
mkdir build devel log
catkin init

6. Dependencies Installation

Install mavros and mavlink from source:

cd ~/sky_simulator

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-mavros ros-noetic-mavros-extras
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mavlink/mavros/master/mavros/scripts/install_geographiclib_datasets.sh
chmod a+x install_geographiclib_datasets.sh
sudo ./install_geographiclib_datasets.sh

wstool init ~/sky_simulator/src

rosinstall_generator --upstream mavros | tee /tmp/mavros.rosinstall
rosinstall_generator mavlink | tee -a /tmp/mavros.rosinstall
wstool merge -t src /tmp/mavros.rosinstall
wstool update -t src
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro `echo $ROS_DISTRO` -y

catkin build

Add a line to end of ~/.bashrc by running the following command:

echo "source ~/sky_simulator/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

update global variables:

source ~/.bashrc

Run the following command to tell Gazebo where to look for models:

echo "GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH=${GAZEBO_MODEL_PATH}:$HOME/sky_simulator/src/gz_sim/models" >> ~/.bashrc

8. Build Instructions

Inside sky_simulator, run catkin build:

cd ~/sky_simulator
catkin build

Update global variables:

source ~/.bashrc

9. First test of setup

To test the simulation, you need at least two terminal windows:

• Run SITL:

sim_vehicle.py -v ArduCopter -f gazebo-iris --console

• Launch Gazebo and ROS:

roslaunch gz_sim sky_sim.launch

These are the commands that remap.py calls to run the simulation.

10. Full setup test

To control the drone with the joystick, turn on your ESP32 and run the script remap.py. In case of our project, we are still working on an Interface to use as a menu of the game running in the FPGA (with lifes, difficulty leveles, etc).

Working with Submodules

Submodules are, simply put, repositories within repositories. In order to work with them, say, to commit, push, pull, etc. you can't just commit to the sky_ws repository, as all the changes you've made to the submodules won't be commited - instead, you have to either commit each submodule individually, or use the following command to do all the submodules at once.

git submodule foreach <your-desired-git-command>

then, do the same command to the sky_ws repository, as you would've normally.

If you cloned this repository without the recursive flag

Just run the following commands to initialize the submodules

git submodule update --init --recursive