🚗 Differential-Drive Robot with ROS2 Foxy, Gazebo, and RViz 🚗

This repository contains a ROS2 Foxy package for simulating and visualizing a differential-drive mobile robot in Gazebo and RViz. The robot's configuration and design are defined using URDF (Unified Robot Description Format).

📂 Repository Structure

• config/
  Contains configuration file to add adjust visulaization in rviz2:

  • view_bot.rviz

• description/
  Contains the URDF files used to describe the robot:

  • camera.xacro: Represents the camera link, joint, and plugin.
  • gazebo_control.xacro: Represents the differential drive plugin.
  • inertial_macros.xacro: Specify some standard inertial calculations as macros.
  • inertial_macros.xacro: Specify some standard inertial calculations as macros.
  • robot.urdf.xacro: Acts as linker to the rest of xacro files.
  • robot_core.xacro: Has all differential robots links and joints (the definition of the robot).

• launch/
  Includes launch files:

  • display.launch.py: Launchs file used in the early stages of design period to visualize robot and use robot_state_publisher.
  • sim.launch.py: Launchs the robot in a gazebo world by using spawn entity from gazebo_ros package.

• worlds/
  Contains the world file:

  • custom_world.world: Defines a custom environment where a robot should spawns in.

• empty_world.world: In case you need to test your robot in an empty world.

• CMakeLists.txt & package.xml
  Standard files for defining the ROS2 package dependencies and build process. 🛠️

✨ Features

1. 🌌 Simulation in Gazebo:
   The robot is spawned in a custom world and can interact with the simulation environment.

2. 🔍 Visualization in RViz:
   Displays the robot model and sensor data for debugging and monitoring.

3. 🛠️ URDF Robot Model:
   A detailed URDF representation of a differential-drive mobile robot with camera sensor.

📋 Prerequisites

• ROS2 Foxy installed on your system.
• Gazebo is required for simulation.

🚀 How to Use

1. Clone the repository inside <ROS2_WS/SRC>:

   git clone https://github.com/Hazem-M-Abdelaziz/diff_bot.git
   cd <ROS2_WS>

2. Build the package:

    colcon build --symlink-install
    source install/setup.bash

3. Launch the simulation and visualization:

    ros2 launch diff_bot sim.launch.py world:=./<pathFromCurrentToCustomWorldFileWithExtension>
   

This will:

• 📜 Load the robot model into the parameter server.
• 🌍 Start Gazebo with the specified world.
• 🤖 Spawn the robot in the simulation environment.
• 📷 Publish camera sensor snaps into /camera topics.

⌨️ Moving using teleop node

• for this, you'll need to install teleop_twist_keyboard package to use teleop_twist_keyboard node as follows:

   ros2 run teleop_twist_keyboard teleop_twist_keyboard
  

⌨️ Visualizing in RViz2

• For sensory data and tf visualization:

   rviz2 -d ros2_ws/src/diff_bot/config/view_bot.rviz 
  

Credits 🙌

Special thanks to Articulated Robotics Youtube channel for their valuable published tutorials.