BosDyn Spot robot Sim (ROS2/GazeboIgn)

Adaption of champ quadruped robot to ROS2 and Ignition Gazebo. Previously, the Boston Dynamics Spot robot was only simulated using ROS2 with Gazebo Classic, which goes end-of-life in January 2025. This package, modified from quadruped_ros2, simulates the Spot robot in Ignition Gazebo, a newer version of Gazebo. This combination of simulating the Spot robot with ROS2 and Ignition Gazebo on an open-source platform has not been done yet.

Challenge

• Challenge Name: NASA Space ROS Sim Summer Sprint Challenge
• Challenge Participant: Diya Agarwal
• Team Lead Freelancer User Name: diyaagar
• Submission Title: Simulation of the Boston Dynamics Spot robot in ROS2 and Ignition Gazebo

Package Information

• champ: includes configurations for the quadruped's kinematics/movement
• champ_base: includes configurations for the quadruped's specific state and controllers
• champ_bringup: includes the controller yaml files and launch files
• champ_description: contains meshes model configs for three robots (inluding Spot)
• champ_gazebo: contains world/environment configs
• champ_msgs: contains info about robot messages

How to Install (Docker info)

1. Navigate to your workspace (my_ws)

2. Build the Docker Image

chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh

3. Run the container

chmod +x run.sh
./run.sh

How to run

1. Source your ROS2 distribution.

source /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash

2. Source your workspace.

source ~/my_ws/install/setup.bash

3. Run the launch file.

ros2 launch champ_bringup champ_bringup.launch.py

With this, Ignition Gazebo and RViz will both launch.

How to change worlds/environments

• In the launch file (champ_bringup.launch.py), there are multiple world configurations to change between. When launching the Ignition Gazebo world, simply change the name of file path.

How to add a new environment:

• In champ_gazebo/worlds, add a .sdf file along with the necessary meshes with the correct path directory.
• In the launch file, add a file path to your .sdf and launch it with Ignition Gazebo.

Examples

For different environments, see last section.

1. Spot Robot in ground plane (simple surface, just a plane)
2. Spot Robot in rocky lunar surface (has varying heights)

Details of Configurations

To see the topics to configure the controllers, run the following commands:

This shows the links/joints of the robot.

ros2 run tf2_tools view_frames

This shows the nodes/topics to send information to make the robot walk.

ros2 run rqt_graph rqt_graph

(Typically use the Twist command with /vox_nav/cmd_vel topic configure controllers)

Contributions

Modified from https://github.com/jediofgever/quadruped_ros2.

Contributor is Diya Agarwal, an undergraduate student at Caltech. This research was conducted at Florida International University's Applied Research Center, under Dr. Dwayne McDaniel.