Simulators
Simulators are very good tools for developing and testing robotics software. They make robotics affordable for everyone. Imagine that you are working on a robotics project, where you constantly have to test functionality improvements with your robot. It would require connecting the robot for each test, charging it many times, and moving it with you. All of this can be avoided with a simulator, which can be launched in your computer at any time; it can even simulate the nodes and topics generated by the robot. Do you know any simulator for working with robots?
We are going to use Gazebo, a simulator included in the ROS full installation. In fact, if you chose this option while installing it, you can write "gazebo" in a terminal and it will launch the simulator. The Gazebo interface is shown in Figure 6.4:
Figure 6.5: The Gazebo start point
The next step is to install and set up the robot that we are going to simulate. In this case, we will use a Turtlebot, a wheelie robot that is...
