SUMO bot on ROS

Tested and working for ROS melodic. Issue with tf_prefix in ROS noetic.

This repository tests whether one can set up a SUMO bot competition using ROS + Gazebo. The structure of this repo reflects how a SUMO bot would be built by general members of UTRA (University of Toronto Robotics Association) SUMO.

The expected pipeline for completing a sumo bot is as follows:

1. Design CAD of robot (not done in this repository)
2. Spawn robot in Gazebo from CAD model
3. Add Gazebo plugins (motor, range/illuminance sensors)
4. Create a node to perform sumo competition algorithms
5. Compete!

Lastly, one would expect members to start from a template repository with packages they are not expected to create themselves (eg. /gazebo_light_sensor_plugin and /worlds).

Overview of Packages

/algorithm

Contains a node (written in either in C++ or Python) that subscribes to sensor topics, computes a command to move the robot and then publishes it to the appropriate topic.

This node would contain all the logic for the desired algorithm.

/description

Contains the code needed to simulate the sumo bot. A robot is built using URDF and the model (+ properties) from CAD. There are also launch files which serve to spawn Gazebo, RViz, the robot and start the algorithm node.

Namespacing and ensuring appropriate simulation limits are respected need to be checked before allowing a sumo bot to compete!

/gazebo_light_sensor_plugin

The code this package is adapted from is this repository. It uses a small camera and computes illuminance by averaging pixel brightness. General members would not be expected to recreate this plugin from scratch, but it would be provided as part of a template repository.

/worlds

A simple sumo ring consisting of a black circle with a radius of about 1 meter and white outside of the circle. To be able to use this world run:

# Make the shell script executable
chmod +x ./worlds/install_world.sh

# Run the shell script
./worlds/install_world.sh

This installs the sumo_ring model (written in SDF) to the ~./gazebo/models folder. General members would not recreate this plugin themselves, rather it would be part of a template repository.