ROS extension of the e-puck simulated in V-REP

This script builds upon the e-puck model that comes bundled with V-REP and uses the V-REP ROSInterface plugin in order to communicate with ROS.

The ROS topics are the same as those used by the epuck_driver_cpp ROS package, that is used to control a real robot, namely:

Input from robot:

• proximity0 to proximity7
• camera
• imu
• tf

Output to robot:

• cmd_vel
• cmd_led

The topics are prefixed with the robot number, e.g /ePuck0/camera. Copy-pasted robots will be numbered incrementaly.

This repository includes:

* `epuck_vrep_ros.lua`: the lua script that can be attached to a simulated e-puck
* `e-puck.ttm`: an epuck model that can be directly loaded in a V-REP scene, using `File -> Load model`

Before starting any simulation, make sure that the opMode parameter of the e-puck is to 2 as the first two values (0 and 1) are reserved for the original line-follower and leader-follow behaviours that came with the e-puck model. See the V-REP user interface documentation for information on modifying parameters.

Detailed description

A detailed description of this package and the noise model that was applied in order to simulate infrared sensor noise is avaialble in the following paper:

A. G. Florea, “Integrating a V-Rep Simulated Mobile Robot into Ros,” Univ. Politeh. Buchar. Sci. Bull. Ser. C-Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci., vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 3–16, 2018

Usage

Assuming you have a working ROS and VREP configuration, complete with the epuck_driver_cpp, using this extension is simply a matter of drag-and-dropping e-puck.ttm into your V-REP scene.

Easy start - Docker

The following is usefull only to users that do not have a working ROS, VREP configuration.

In order to simplify the installation procedure, users of Docker can use a specially built container that has ROS, V-REP and this extension pre-installed.

After installing docker, the container can be downloaded using: docker pull naturo/epuck_vrep_ros

Once downloaded, the steps required to simulate an e-puck in V-REP and control it through ROS are shown on the DockerHub page: https://hub.docker.com/r/naturo/epuck_vrep_ros/

License notice

The MIT license applies specifically to the ROS extensions introduced in this repository. The rest of the code is licensed under the e-puck license.

If this extension was useful in your academic work, please cite the following paper:

A. G. Florea, “Integrating a V-Rep Simulated Mobile Robot into Ros,” Univ. Politeh. Buchar. Sci. Bull. Ser. C-Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci., vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 3–16, 2018

@article{ ISI:000440896700001,
    Author = {Florea, Andrei George},
    Title = {{INTEGRATING A V-REP SIMULATED MOBILE ROBOT INTO ROS}},
    Journal = {{UNIVERSITY POLITEHNICA OF BUCHAREST SCIENTIFIC BULLETIN SERIES
       C-ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE}},
    Year = {{2018}},
    Volume = {{80}},
    Number = {{3}},
    Pages = {{3-16}},
    Publisher = {{POLYTECHNIC UNIV BUCHAREST}},
    Address = {{SPLAIUL INDEPENDENTEI 313, SECTOR 6, BUCH, 060042, ROMANIA}},
    Type = {{Article}},
    Language = {{English}},
    ISSN = {{2286-3540}},
    Keywords = {{simulation; V-REP; ROS; e-puck}},
}

Authors

Andrei George Florea, Cătălin Buiu

Department of Automatic Control And Systems Engineering,

Politehnica University of Bucharest

Bucharest, Romania.