Cart-Pole Co-simulation

Cart-Pole Matlab & ROS/Gazebo Co-simulation framework developed by erc-dynamics.

This repository contains a co-simulation project that features a cart-pole robot controlled by an LQR controller. The objective is to offer a simulation framework suitable for reinforcement learning and optimization research.

Setup

This setup utilizes two computers:

• one running Ubuntu 20.04 and the other running Windows. The Ubuntu machine operates ROS Noetic and Gazebo, handling real-time simulation.
• The Windows computer is required to run a version of MATLAB that includes the ROS Toolbox. The goal is to simplify the complexities of ROS and Linux, while offering a real-time simulation environment that closely mirrors real-world applications.
• To make this setup function, both computers need to be connected to a network. Ensure that these two machines can interact and communicate with each other over the network.

Installation (Ubuntu 20.04 machine)

The Ubuntu computer uses ROS for robot simulation in the Gazebo setting. We highly recommend using the ROS Noetic version that was originally used for this project's development.

• ROS Noetic Desktop-Full Install: To install ROS Noetic please follow the instructions at installation document.
• Create a catkin workspace, follow the instructions.

Installation (Windows machine)

The Windows machine runs Matlab, which needs to interface with ROS.

• Matlab: Ensure that your Matlab has the ROS Toolbox installed.
• Later, we will have to generate a Matlab custom message for ROS. Based on the Matlab documentation provided here, your machine should have one of the following installed to generate a ROS custom message: Microsoft Visual C++ 2022 product family, Microsoft Visual C++ 2019 product family or Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 product family. You can download Microsoft Visual C++ 2017 product family from this link. Links for other Visual Studio versions are readily available online.
• Read and follow the Build and Run instructions here to setup your Windows machine for co-simulation.
• Matlab repository

Build (Ubuntu 20.04)

Clone this repository inside src/ folder of your ROS workspace. A recommended directory structure would look like so:

├── catkin_ws/
│   ├── src/
│   │   └── cart_pole/
│   ├── devel/
│   └── build/

Run catkin_make in catkin_ws/ directory to compile the cart_pole package.

Run

Before running the simulation, run the following commands in terminal. Do not FORGET to replace the <UbuntuIP> with your Ubuntu machine IP address.

echo "export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://<UbuntuIP>:11311" >> ~/.bashrc
echo "export ROS_IP=<UbuntuIP>" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

To run the co-simulation, this package features cosimulation.launch file that starts Gazebo with cart_pole.world file with necessary ROS nodes. The simplest way to launch the co-simulation is:

roslaunch cart_pole cosimulation.launch

Once launched, you can execute the Matlab code to initiate simulations as required.

Manually launching the simulation

You can also run the simulation manually without Matlab. To do that you can use the launch file gazebo.launch.

roslaunch cart_pole cosimulation.launch

License and Usage

This co-simulation framework is developed in the erc-dynamics Lab. Please use wisely, and recommend improvements! If you use this co-simulation for your work, please cite the ISAS 2023 paper that describes it in full detail.