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cs:simulator:thrusterplugin:start [2016/12/12 16:13] Dustin Crossman |
cs:simulator:thrusterplugin:start [2016/12/16 12:42] (current) Dustin Crossman |
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| ====== Thruster Plugin ====== | ====== Thruster Plugin ====== | ||
| - | The thruster plugin is a gazebo plugin used to do a number of things. | + | The thruster plugin runs the thrusters for our simulated sub. It is responsible for: |
| + | * Running a ROS node that receives thruster messages and then adds forces as appropriate. | ||
| + | * Visualizing the thruster output graphically by sending visual messages to the gazebo server. These are distinct from ROS messages and will covered in the next section. | ||
| + | * Add buoyancy to the submarine. We do this manually in the thruster plugin instead of utilizing the built-in buoyancy plugin because we found the buoyancy plugin to behave weirdly. | ||
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| + | ====== Thruster Visualizer ====== | ||
| + | When gazebo is run it starts both a server (gzserver) and a client (gzclient). Since model plugins are run on the server but visuals are run on the client gazebo messages must be sent from the thruster plugin (which is a model plugin) to the client in order to add visuals to the simulator. | ||
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| + | To visualize each thruster a very narrow cylinder is defined for each. This cylinder is then scaled and positioned each time a new thruster message is recieved. To see how the visual messages are defined see [[https://github.com/PalouseRobosub/robosub_simulator/blob/master/src/thruster.cpp#L88|here]]. | ||
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| + | To see the actual scaling and resizing steps see [[https://github.com/PalouseRobosub/robosub_simulator/blob/master/src/thruster.cpp#L145|UpdateVisualizers]]. | ||
