ardrone_gazebo (adapted for DataVis)

Gazebo simulator test environment for the Parrot ArDrone. The world is a simulated version of the ISR 7th floor. The ArDrone model is based on the implementation of a gazebo simulator for the Ardrone 2.0 written by Hongrong Huang and Juergen Sturm of the Computer Vision Group at the Technical University of Munich (http://wiki.ros.org/tum_simulator).

Packages Description

NOTE from DataVis Dev: Some of these packages don't work properly. We'll only be using the ardrone_vislab package but I wanted to leave the information from the other ones so that you know they're there.

• ardrone_helpers: Contains the joystick controller for the ardrone. I haven't touched this.
• ardrone_vislab: Contains the gazebo world files of the lab map, the ardrone model with the plugins and the simulation launch files. This should work fine.
• aruco_test: Contains the aruco board recognition package. It recognises the board in the simulator and publishes its position and pose on a ros topic (/ardrone/aruco/pose) I haven't touched this.
• opticalflow_controller: Contains a python reactive controller based on optical flow and inspired by flies. This one is actually pretty cool but the python file does not contain a single comment or docstring.

Environment

• Operating System
  • Ubuntu 14.04 - or newer
• Middleware
  • ROS - depending on the installed OS (Indigo, Jade or Kinetic)
• Other Dependencies
  • GAZEBO - It needs GAZEBO 5 or newer

At any time you might need to install some more specific dependencies (like some missing ROS packages). Please open an issue in case you can't solve these or other dependencies.

Download and Setup

0 - Stop Anaconda from ruining everything

Anaconda and ROS don't like eachother. Make sure to remove it from your ~/.bashrc file so that it doesn't ruin everything. First, open your .bashrc file in your favorite text editor.

$ atom ~/.bashrc

Now comment out the line added by Anaconda "export PATH="/home/egonzalez/anaconda3/bin:$PATH""

1 - Install ROS

Install ros full desktop following the installation instructions on the official ros website: www.ros.org (I tested on kinetic. Feel free to try something else but be ready to suffer.)

2 - Install the ardrone_autonomy package

If you are on Ubuntu simply write on your console:

$ sudo apt-get install ros-<your-ros-distribution>-ardrone-autonomy

3 - Install gazebo5 or newer

If you are using ros indigo install gazebo5, 6 or 7 from the osrfoundation repository. look at this page for more details: http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=ros_wrapper_versions

4 - Install the aruco lib

In order to install the aruco library, download "aruco-2.0.19.zip" from https://sourceforge.net/projects/aruco/files/2.0.19/ and extract the contents into a new folder. Navigate to that folder and run the following to compile the library:

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make -j4

Within the the build directory, be sure to run:

$ sudo make install

This installs the library you just compiled.

Now add an environment variable with the path to your aruco library directory. To do so export the ARUCO_LIB_PATH inside your .bashrc:

$ echo "export ARUCO_LIB_PATH=/usr/local/lib" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

5 - Create a catkin workspace

If you don't have it already, create a catkin workspace folder (for more informations look at this link: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingandConfiguringROSEnvironment):

$ mkdir catkin_ws

Create a folder named src inside it:

$ cd catkin_ws
$ mkdir src

Run catkin_init_workspace inside the src directory:

$ cd src
$ catkin_init_workspace

Build your catkin workspace:

$ cd ..
$ catkin_make

Now source your new setup.bash file inside your .bashrc:

$ echo "source ~/<your_catkin_ws_directory>/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc

6 - Clone the git repository

Clone the git repository inside your catkin workspace src directory:

$ cd <your_catkin_ws_directory>/src
$ git clone https://github.com/OlinDataVis/ardrone_gazebo.git

Compile

1 - Compile the ros package with catkin

In order to compile the packages just run the following commands:

$ cd <your_catkin_ws_directory>
$ catkin_make

Run

1 - Running the simulation environment

To launch the simulator, run ardrone_vislab launcher using roslaunch:

$ roslaunch ardrone_vislab_gazebo ardrone_vislab.launch

Issues

All kind of issues and contributions will be very welcome. Please get in touch on our issues page when help is needed!

NOTE from DataVis Dev: This is a link to the original repo we modified this repo from. Just be aware that a few things are different from our version if you decide to reach out.