ROS Humble + Gazebo (Fortress?) - need advice

[Sergei Grichine]

I spent the last couple weeks setting up a new Big Turtlebot-like robot ("Dragger") for outdoor work.

While the physical robot conversion (from PX4 to ROS) was easy, having simulation to work was a torture.

It turns out that:

1. ROS Humble's recommended Gazebo version is a quite old Fortress ("Ignition" type, not Classic)

2. Gazebo Fortress is a mess - it was in the middle of being renamed from "Ignition" to "gz", and on top of this is still very buggy.

3. The state of matching ros2_control(lers) packages was also questionable.

4. SDF's have to be reworked, the plugins' appearance and placement is very different from Classic.

5. Anything code or docs you can find online are dated or incorrect

5. Basically, nothing works (sensors, controllers)...

To be clear, I was trying to only install officially recommended binaries (apt install) and never compiled from source. 

If you happen to have a Gazebo Classic installed, Humble kind of works with it. But there's a big architectural shift between Classic and Ignition, when it comes to ROS2 Control Manager - Classic wants you to spawn your own, while Ignition runs it as part of the Gazebo shim layer. That means a huge difference in .xacro and launch files between the two.

We already had this discussion here a while ago - I wasn't focused on this topic then:

      Subject: [HBRobotics] Errors launching TurtleBot4 Simulator

      https://groups.google.com/g/hbrobotics/c/FtMOPWSC5j8/m/gfVjKsmTAAAJ?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer

I didn't see any conclusion to it, would be great to know if a solution was ultimately found.

Anyway, my next step will be trying to use Gazebo Garden with ROS Humble. PX4 uses the more recent Gazebo Garden, and I didn't have any problems with it.

I would also ask anyone who has any ideas to chime in to help.

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Best Regards,

-- Sergei

[Chris Albertson]

Have you looked to see it it is not better to move to “Iron” for a new project.   I know Iron is only supported until Nov 2024 but by then a new LTS version will be out and you move to that and stick with it.    

I’m also just starting something new and plan to use Gazebo.

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