Plug in for tracked vehicles

[osrf-migration]

Original report (archived issue) by Hector Escobar (Bitbucket: hector_escobar).

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We would like to know if you have an ignition plug in available for tracked vehicles like the one on previous Gazebo like the ones below,

https://bitbucket.org/osrf/gazebo/pull-requests/3116/added-cmd_vel_twist-control-topic-to/diff

https://bitbucket.org/osrf/gazebo/pull-requests/2652/added-support-for-tracked-vehicles/diff

[osrf-migration]

Original comment by Neil Johnson (Bitbucket: realdealneil1980).

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Related question: Is ignition-gazebo (what’s used by SubT) the same as one of the releases of gazebo? The above pull requests were accepted into gazebo9, I believe. Is there a porting guide for transitioning plugins from regular gazebo (gazebo9, 10, 11, etc) to ignition-gazebo? The versioning is pretty confusing.

[osrf-migration]

Original comment by Nate Koenig (Bitbucket: Nathan Koenig).

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There is an approximation of tracked vehicle support in Ignition using a large number of wheels. See https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/ign-gazebo/src/default/examples/worlds/track_drive.sdf.

Ignition is not Gazebo9/10/11. The Ignition code resides in separate repositories (https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/) and has a different API. There is also a separate web page, with release information. Additionally, there are separate debians for Ignition.

Here is a migration guide.

[peci1]

I'm gonna work on this, but it's probably gonna take time and require hacking DART. But do I understand correctly that OSRF and DART developers are somehow close and changes in DART could be upstreamed fast enough to be useful for the Final event?

[peci1]

I've started working on a more proper support of tracked vehicles in Ignition Gazebo: gazebo-forks/dart#22 .

[peci1]

Solution proposed in #958

[peci1]

With #958 being merged, Absolem and MARV robots have already received the proper tracks model. Now waiting for #1048 to add it to the remaining tracked robot models.

[peci1]

#1048 got also merged 🎉 , so all tracked vehicles in subt now have the better track model. The only thing that is now pending for the models to be usable in cloudsim is a new subt release of docker images. Except for that, this issue can be closed.