A ROS and Gazebo based simulation tool that can generate CaroloCup roads and simulate a car driving on the generated roads.

ROS topics allow to easily access sensor data and modify the car's position or speed. Thus, allowing to completely simulate the bevahior of the car.

The documentation is available at https://public-doc.kitcar-team.de/kitcar-gazebo-simulation.

The repositories usage is licensed under a MIT license (''LICENSE''). If external files are used, a specific LICENSE-file is provided in the same folder, covering the usage of those files.

The simulation has been developed and primarily used on Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04. Other Linux distributions were not tested. Additionally, ROS Installation must be installed.

The first step is of course to clone the repository. These are some ways to get it:

• KITcar internal. Clone this repository in the same directory as kitcar-ros. Change into the correct directory. By default it's /home/<USERNAME>/kitcar and run:

  git clone git@git.kitcar-team.de:kitcar/kitcar-gazebo-simulation.git

• KITcar external. You can clone the repository from Github.

The environment variable $KITCAR_REPO_PATH must contain the directory in which you've cloned kitcar-gazebo-simulation.

Make sure that $KITCAR_REPO_PATH is set to the directory where you've cloned kitcar-gazebo-simulation into:

cd $KITCAR_REPO_PATH/kitcar-gazebo-simulation

should put you into the root directory of kitcar-gazebo-simulation.

If it doesn't work, create the variable with:

export KITCAR_REPO_PATH=<DIRECTORY WHERE kitcar-gazebo-simulation IS>

Adding

export KITCAR_REPO_PATH=<DIRECTORY WHERE kitcar-gazebo-simulation IS>

to your .bashrc ensures that the path is always set.

Ensure that your Python-Version is 3.8 or larger:

python3 -V

If not, upgrade your system to Python 3.8. (KITcar internal: Goto KITcar-Gazebo-Simulation Python )

ROS must also be installed on your machine. If it's not yet installed, follow the installation guide.

To install required packages run the init script. The packages are installed for the current user. Change into kitcar-gazebo-simulation folder and run the script:

cd $KITCAR_REPO_PATH/kitcar-gazebo-simulation
./init/init.sh

(Ubuntu 18.04: Ignore any error thrown by pip when trying to install pygobject, it seems to be irrelevant.)

Then build kitcar-gazebo-repository by calling catkin_make in the simulation folder of this repository.

Images and other large files are tracked using Git LFS, to download them locally, you need to pull them:

git lfs pull

Let's test if everything works. Open up a new terminal.

You can now start the simulation with

roslaunch gazebo_simulation master.launch

Gazebo should now open with the car and a road.