This simulator was developed using Webots 2023a. Additionally, the ROS version is Noetic, which can be downloaded from Noetic.

The developed package has the following dependencies, which must be included in the ROS working space: webots_ros and ackermann_msgs.

Finally, the project includes an installation file to include all necessary dependencies for Python and ROS, defined as follows:

chmod +x install_python.sh
./install_python.sh

The WEBOTS_HOME environment variable must be set to the installation folder of Webots.

export WEBOTS_HOME=/usr/local/webots

Create the following ROS workspace

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/

Inside the ROS workspace /src must be included: webots_ros and ackermann_msgs.

Due to the python3 is necessary to configure the catkin workspace as follows:

catkin_make -DPYTHON_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python3

Before continuing source your new setup.*sh file:

source devel/setup.bash

To run the simulator using Blue Robot, execute the following command:

roslaunch blue_simulator simulator_webots.launch

To run the simulator considering photovoltaic arrays and aerial vehicle, execute the following command:

roslaunch blue_simulator  thermal.launch

To run the simulator considering a 6 DOF manipulator robot (DOBOT CR3), execute the following command:

roslaunch blue_simulator cr3_simulation.launch

To facilitate the installation and use of the simulator, it can be built with a docker with the following instructions

mkdir ~/webot-blue
cd ~/webot-blue/
git clone https://github.com/lfrecalde1/blue_simulator.git
cd ~/webot-blue/blue_simulator

sudo docker build -t webots-blue . 

sudo docker run --shm-size=1g --ulimit memlock=-1 --ulimit stack=67108864 --rm -it --net=host -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY --user=$(id -u $USER):$(id -g $USER) --name webots-blue-container --gpus all --cpuset-cpus="0-2" webots-blue

• The docker image is based from nvidia/cuda:11.8.0-base-ubuntu20.04. It also has Webots R2023a and ROS Noetic.
• When launching the container, it is specified that all graphics and 3 cpu cores will be used.