Ignition Gazebo : A Robotic Simulator

Maintainer: louise AT openrobotics DOT org

Build	Status
Test coverage
Ubuntu Bionic
Homebrew
Windows

Ignition Gazebo is an open source robotics simulator. Through Ignition Gazebo, users have access to high fidelity physics, rendering, and sensor models. Additionally, users and developers have multiple points of entry to simulation including a graphical user interface, plugins, and asynchronous message passing and services.

Ignition Gazebo is derived from Gazebo and represents over 16 years of development and experience in robotics and simulation. This library is part of the Ignition Robotics project.

Table of Contents

Features

Install

• Binary Install

• Source Install

  • Prerequisites

  • Building from Source

Usage

Documentation

Testing

Folder Structure

Code of Conduct

Contributing

Versioning

License

Features

• Dynamics simulation: Access multiple high-performance physics engines through Ignition Physics.

• Advanced 3D graphics: Through Ignition Rendering, it's possible to use rendering engines such as OGRE v2 for realistic rendering of environments with high-quality lighting, shadows, and textures.

• Sensors and noise models: Generate sensor data, optionally with noise, from laser range finders, 2D/3D cameras, Kinect style sensors, contact sensors, force-torque, IMU, GPS, and more, all powered by Ignition Sensors

• Plugins: Develop custom plugins for robot, sensor, and environment control.

• Graphical interface: Create, instrospect and interact with your simulations through plugin-based graphical interfaces powered by Ignition GUI.

• Simulation models: Access numerous robots including PR2, Pioneer2 DX, iRobot Create, and TurtleBot, and construct environments using other physically accurate models available through Ignition Fuel. You can also build a new model using SDF.

• TCP/IP Transport: Run simulation on remote servers and interface to Ignition Gazebo through socket-based message passing using Ignition Transport.

• Command line tools: Extensive command line tools for increased simulation introspection and control.

Install

We recommend following the Binary Install instructions to get up and running as quickly and painlessly as possible.

The Source Install instructions should be used if you need the very latest software improvements, you need to modify the code, or you plan to make a contribution.

Binary Install

The binary install method will use pre-built packages which are typically available through a package management utility such as Apt. This approach eliminates the need to download and compile source code, and dependencies are handled for you. The downside of a binary install is that you won't be able to modify the code. See Source Install for information on installing Ignition Gazebo from source.

Ubuntu Bionic

1. Configure package repositories.

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
   

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-prerelease `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-prerelease.list'
   

   wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
   

   sudo apt-get update
   

2. Install Ignition Gazebo

   sudo apt-get install libignition-gazebo4-dev
   

Source Install

Install from source if you're interested in changing the source code or need a feature which hasn't been released yet.

Prerequisites

Ignition Gazebo has a fairly large set of dependencies. Refer to the following sections for dependency installation instructions for each supported operating system.

Ubuntu Bionic

1. Enable the Ignition software repositories:

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
   

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-prerelease `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-prerelease.list'
   

   wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
   

   sudo apt-get update
   

2. Install package dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/ignitionrobotics/ign-gazebo -b ign-gazebo4
   

   export SYSTEM_VERSION=bionic
   sudo apt -y install \
     $(sort -u $(find . -iname 'packages-'$SYSTEM_VERSION'.apt' -o -iname 'packages.apt') | tr '\n' ' ')
   

Building from source

1. Install prerequisites

2. Configure gcc8

   • Ubuntu

     sudo apt-get install g++-8
     

     sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 800 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-8
     

3. Clone the repository if you haven't already.

   git clone https://github.com/ignitionrobotics/ign-gazebo -b ign-gazebo4
   

4. Configure and build.

   cd ign-gazebo
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake ../
   make
   

Usage

Gazebo can be run from the command line, once installed, using:

ign gazebo

For help, and command line options use:

ign gazebo -h

Known issue of command line tools

In the event that the installation is a mix of Debian and from source, command line tools from ign-tools may not work correctly.

A workaround for a single package is to define the environment variable IGN_CONFIG_PATH to point to the location of the Ignition library installation, where the YAML file for the package is found, such as

export IGN_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/share/ignition

However, that environment variable only takes a single path, which means if the installations from source are in different locations, only one can be specified.

Another workaround for working with multiple Ignition libraries on the command line is using symbolic links to each library's YAML file.

mkdir ~/.ignition/tools/configs -p
cd ~/.ignition/tools/configs/
ln -s /usr/local/share/ignition/fuel4.yaml .
ln -s /usr/local/share/ignition/transport9.yaml .
ln -s /usr/local/share/ignition/transportlog9.yaml .
...
export IGN_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/.ignition/tools/configs

This issue is tracked here.

Documentation

API documentation and tutorials can be accessed at https://ignitionrobotics.org/libs/gazebo

You can also generate the documentation from a clone of this repository by following these steps.

1. You will need Doxygen. On Ubuntu Doxygen can be installed using

   sudo apt-get install doxygen
   

2. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/ignitionrobotics/ign-gazebo
   

3. Configure and build the documentation.

   cd ign-gazebo
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake ../
   make doc
   

4. View the documentation by running the following command from the build directory.

   firefox doxygen/html/index.html
   

Testing

Follow these steps to run tests and static code analysis in your clone of this repository.

1. Follow the source install instructions.

2. Run tests.

   make test
   

3. Static code checker.

   sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y install cppcheck
   

   make codecheck
   

See the Writing Tests section of the contributor guide for help creating or modifying tests.

Folder Structure

Refer to the following table for information about important directories and files in this repository.

ign-gazebo
├── examples                     Various examples that can be run against binary or source installs of ign-gazebo.
│   ├── plugin                   Example plugins.
│   ├── standalone               Example standalone programs that use ign-gazebo as a library.
│   └── worlds                   Example SDF world files.
├── include/ignition/gazebo      Header files that downstream users are expected to use.
│   └── detail                   Header files that are not intended for downstream use, mainly template implementations.
├── src                          Source files and unit tests.
│   ├── gui                      Graphical interface source code.
│   └── systems                  System source code.
├── test
│   ├── integration              Integration tests.
│   ├── performance              Performance tests.
│   ├── plugins                  Plugins used in tests.
│   ├── regression               Regression tests.
│   └── tutorials                Tutorials, written in markdown.
├── Changelog.md                 Changelog.
├── CMakeLists.txt               CMake build script.
├── Migration.md                 Migration guide.
└── README.md                    This readme.

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code of Conduct

Please see CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Versioning

This library uses Semantic Versioning. Additionally, this library is part of the Ignition Robotics project which periodically releases a versioned set of compatible and complimentary libraries. See the Ignition Robotics website for version and release information.

License

This library is licensed under Apache 2.0. See also the LICENSE file.