This project contains a gazebo model and ros plugin for simulating the Bitcraze MultiRanger deck for Crazyflie 2.0. MultiRanger is currently unreleased and this project is a work in progress.
This project models the Multiranger deck by representing the VL53L1X sensor as a RaySensor in the SDF format used by Gazebo.
The sensor region of interest is modeled as a volume of rays using the <horizontal> and <vertical> <scan> properties of the RaySensor.
Then, a model plug-in publishes the minimum distance measured in each volume of rays to a topic.
This is the same approach as is used in Hector Gazebo Plugins to model sonar sensors commonly used as altimeters in larger quadrotors.
Currently this project requires Gazebo 9
Clone this repository to a catkin workspace and build from source using
catkin_make multiranger_deck_gazebo_ros
This will put the gazebo plugin library and model in the devel/share folder of the workspace.
Relative to your catkin workspace location,
- add devel/lib to
CATKIN_PLUGIN_PATH - add devel/share/multiranger_deck_gazebo_ros/model to
CATKIN_MODEL_PATH - start a roscore and Gazebo with
roscore & rosrun gazebo_ros gazebo - insert the multiranger model into the Gazebo world.
This project benefited from Hector Gazebo Plugins Hector Gazebo Plugins and the Gazebo plugin-tutorial. In particular, the sonar gazebo plugin in Hector Gazebo Plugins was used as a reference.
- Add an inertia / mass model
- Parameterize the model to implement the various operating modes of the VL53L1X (angle spread, range, update rate etc)
- Add parameter to disable visual rendering of the sensor rays
- Remake the collision and visual elements of the model to match the dimensions and appearance of the sensor
- Add support for prior versions of the Gazebo API