Gazebo Simulation for Distributed Robots

Setup for running multiple distributed robots on the same Gazebo simulation using Multimaster-FKIE ROS 1 package

Prerequisites

1. ROS 1 Noetic
2. The network between the server running the Gazebo simulation and the robots must be set up properly. More info: https://wiki.ros.org/ROS/NetworkSetup
3. Dockerfiles are provided if you want to use a container

Network Configuration

Enable ip_forward and disable icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts in the Gazebo simulation server and robot's machines

sudo sh -c "echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward"
sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts"

Model Configuration

Before we can run the simulation, we need to configure the robot’s model to publish the transformations properly. We can do that by editing the model’s .urdf file to accept a parameter called robot_name, and integrate this parameter to prefix the odometry and base_footprint frame id. Prefix any other topics/TF frames that you need to separate between the robots

I've included an example Turtlebot3 waffle and waffle_pi model that has been modified in this repository

Running the Simulation

Gazebo server

1. Edit the multimaster_gazebo.launch file in the gazebo_server folder and add the hostnames of the robot's machine you want to connect to the Gazebo simulation
2. Run the launch file

   roslaunch multimaster_gazebo.launch

Robot machine

1. Edit the multimaster_robot.launch file in the robot_machine folder and add the hostname of the server running the Gazebo simulation
2. (Optional) Add the other robot's machine hostnames to the ignore hosts parameter in multimaster_robot.launch
3. Run the launch file

   roslaunch multimaster_robot.launch

4. Wait until the robot machine has connected and synchronized the ROS network with the Gazebo server (there should be a log printed after roslaunch)