2020-2021

First time Setup

If your username is 'uwrov', run setup_sim.sh.

If you do not use the VM with username 'uwrov', change any instance of /home/uwrov to /home/{your username}, in setup_sim.sh before running it.

After running the script, run catkin_make and you should be good to go!

Launching the Simulator

Once you have all the simulator files ready, launch a sample world using

roslaunch nautilus_worlds nautilus_sim.launch reset_tam:=true prop:=subway_car

This will launch the simulator, with the nautilus facing the subway car from task 3.4.

Command Line Arguments

nautilus_sim.launch has a few optional command line arguments to fine tune your simulating experience:

• prop_x, prop_y, prop_z: Cartesian coordinates the prop will spawn (in meters)
  • default: (0, 0, -99.5)
• nautilus_x, nautilus_y, nautlius_z: Cartesian coordinates nautilus will spawn (in meters)
  • default: (-3, 0, -99.5)
• prop: Name of the one prop you want to spawn, props listed in the src/models/models/ folder, here are the ones currently supported:
  • default: none
  • subway_car
  • colony_original
  • colony_spec
  • colony_dead_bleach
• reset_tam: Set to true if you need to reset thruster allocation matrix
  • Note: Must be true the first time you run the simulator
  • default: false

Viewing the Simulated Camera

The cameras on nautilus publish sensor_msgs/Image to:

• /nautilus/nautilus/camera1/nautilus_cam: Front facing camera
• /nautilus/nautilus/camera2/nautilus_cam: Downward facing camera

Controlling Nautilus

To control nautilus, send geometry_msgs/Wrench messages to /nautilus/thruster_manager/input.

A Wrench message is defined like so:

Vector3 force
Vector3 torque

force describes the desired force in the xyz directions, while torque represents rotations in rpy.

Note that nautilus can only turn along the z-axis, so only the third component of torque is needed.

Launching a Control Script

All the control scripts are located in [src/nautilus_scripts/scripts]{https://github.com/uwrov/2020-2021/tree/sim/src/nautilus_scripts/scripts}. You can run them by doing a rosrun nautilus_scripts filename.py. Currently the working scripts are:

• subway_car_runner.py