System Demonstration

A demonstration of this project can be seen via the followin youtube link: https://youtu.be/TaC7L7mjqHc

RMIT Driverless Simulator.

Based upon CAT vehicle simulator, see below for details.
To use as is of 26/8/2020,
1: install cat vehicle sim as below
2: download this repository onto your desktop
3: Open files in ubuntuand use the command (CTRL+H) to see hidden folders.
4. Navigate to ~/Home/.gazebo/models/
5: Open a new tab in files (CTRL+T) and navigate to the dowloaded repository
6: In the tracks folder, copy all folders (acceleration, big_track, skidpad, small_track)
7. Paste these in ~/Home/.gazebo/models/
8: now copy the 'urdf', 'worlds', 'meshes' and 'launch' folders from the downloaded depository
9: paste them in 'your_workspace'/src/catvehicle and overwrite the folders that are named identicly, you may need to delete them first
10: you should be good to launch them now

Launching and running model with gazebo:

1: Open a terminal and run, $ roscore
2: In a new terminal window or tab (CTRL+shift+t) run $ roslaunch catvehicle catvehicle_big_track.launch
2a: other tracks include, $ roslaunch catvehicle catvehicle_small_track.launch
$ roslaunch catvehicle catvehicle_skidpad.launch
$ roslaunch catvehicle catvehicle_acceleration.launch
3: In a new terminal run $ gzclient
4: This will open gazebo, click on gazebo and the model should be in the enviroment you launched

optional

5: To move the vehicle open a new terminal and run $ rosrun telop_twist_keyboard telop_twist_keyboard.py /cmd_vel:=/catvehicle/cmd_vel
5a: This window must be open and currently clicked on to recieve keystrokes. speed is very slow to begin so hold q to increase speed.
6: To view cameras and lidar data and to visualise it use $ rosrun rviz rviz
6a: In rvis set Fixed Frame to catvehicle/odom, and use add to add lidar or cameras from topic menu. To add the robot use add and select RobotModel from 'By Display Type'. Then change Robot Description to catvehicle/robot_description and TF Prefix to catvehicle

Cognitive and Autonomous Test Vehicle (CAT Vehicle) Testbed

The CAT Vehicle is a ROS based simulator to facilitate the development of autonomous vehicle applications. This repository houses the files that utilize the Gazebo simulator, and additional interfaces to the physical CAT Vehicle Testbed available at the University of Arizona - Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Dependencies

• ROS
• obstaclestopper
• control_toolbox
• sicktoolbox
• sicktoolbox_wrapper
• stepvel
• cmdvel2gazebo
• Controller manager (allows the car to move around with ROS messages)

  sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-controller-manager
  sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-ros-control ros-melodic-ros-controllers
  sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-gazebo-ros-control

System Requirements

• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (We cannot guarantee if it works on any other version of Ubuntu)
• RAM: 4GB required, > 8GB recommended.

Citing this work

If you find this work useful please give credits to the authors and developers by citing:

Rahul Bhadani, Jonathan Sprinkle, Matthew Bunting. "The CAT Vehicle Testbed: 
A Simulator with Hardware in the Loop for Autonomous Vehicle Applications". 
Proceedings 2nd International Workshop on Safe Control of Autonomous Vehicles (SCAV 2018),
Porto, Portugal, 10th April 2018, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 269,
pp. 32–47.  Download:  http://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.269.4.

bibtex:

@article{bhadani2018cat,
  title={{The CAT Vehicle Testbed: A Simulator with Hardware 
  in the Loop for Autonomous Vehicle Applications}},
  author={Bhadani, Rahul and Sprinkle, Jonathan and Bunting, Matthew},
  journal={{Proceedings of 2nd International Workshop on Safe Control of Autonomous Vehicles
  (SCAV 2018), Porto, Portugal, 10th April 2018, Electronic Proceedings
  in Theoretical Computer Science 269, pp. 32–47}},
year={2018}
}

What's new

• Released for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, ROS Melodic and Gazebo 9.0
• Support for front camera
• More stable vehicle dynamics
• Bug fixes and improvements

How to use it

Installing ROS

• Follow the steps mentioned in the ROS wiki page on how to install ROS Melodic.
• In addition to that we are required to install some additional ros packages

sudo apt-get install ros-melodic-velodyne ros-melodic-novatel-span-driver

Creating catkin workspace

In order to use the catvehicle ROS package, you should work within a catkin workspace. If you do not already have one:

cd ~
mkdir -p catvehicle_ws/src
cd catvehicle_ws/src
catkin_init_workspace
cd ..
catkin_make

At this point, you can extract this release package from catvehicle-3.0.1 and other dependent package into your src directory

cd ~/catvehicle_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/catvehicle
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/obstaclestopper
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/control_toolbox
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/sicktoolbox
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/sicktoolbox_wrapper
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/stepvel
git clone https://github.com/jmscslgroup/cmdvel2gazebo
cd ..
catkin_make

Sourcing workspace to the environment path

echo "source ~/catvehicle_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Simple tutorial and examples

Follow the tutorials on the CAT Vehicle Testbed group on the CPS Virtual Organization to see how to use the testbed.

Issues

If you run into a problem, please feel free to post to issues. If the issue is urgent, please email to catvehicle@list.arizona.edu.

Acknowledgements

License

Copyright (c) 2013-2020 Arizona Board of Regents; The University of Arizona All rights reserved

Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose, provided that the above copyright notice and the following two paragraphs appear in all copies of this software.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE AND ITS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF THE ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

THE ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE SOFTWARE PROVIDED HEREUNDER IS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS, AND THE ARIZONA BOARD OF REGENTS HAS NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.

Authors and contributors

• Jonathan Sprinkle (sprinkjm@email.arizona.edu)
• Rahul Bhadani (rahulbhadani@email.arizona.edu)
• Sam Taylor
• Kennon McKeever (kennondmckeever@email.arizona.edu)
• Alex Warren
• Swati Munjal (smunjal@email.arizona.edu)
• Ashley Kang (askang@email.arizona.edu)
• Matt Bunting (mosfet@email.arizona.edu)
• Sean Whitsitt

Support

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and AFOSR under awards 1659428, 1521617, 1446435, 1262960 and 1253334. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

#RMIT_Driverless_sim