pcg_gazebo: A Python package for rapid-prototyping and scripting of simulations for Gazebo

The pcg_gazebo Python package is an Open Source Project extending the simulation capabilities of the robotics simulator Gazebo for automation and scripting of Gazebo simulations.

Visit the documentation page for more information.

Purpose of the project

This software is a research prototype.

The software is not ready for production use. It has neither been developed nor tested for a specific use case. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards (e.g. ISO 26262).

Installation

Using pip

You can install the pcg-gazebo package using pip as follows

pip install pcg-gazebo

you still might need to install some extra dependencies that cannot be handled by pip as

sudo apt install libspatialindex-dev pybind11-dev libgeos-dev

Give some issues with the package rtree on pip, it would also be recommended to install it from apt. Please install python-rtree if you are using Python 2.x or python3-rtree for Python 3.x.

The default installation does not include rospy dependencies that are not available as a pip package. They have to be installed separately for certain submodules to work, such as pcg_gazebo.task_manager.

From source

First install some non-Python dependencies

sudo apt install libspatialindex-dev pybind11-dev libgeos-dev libfcl-dev liboctomap-dev

Then clone the repository and install it using pip

git clone https://github.com/boschresearch/pcg_gazebo.git
cd pcg_gazebo
pip install .

Using the package with ROS and Gazebo

Certain functionalities as the Gazebo proxy, task manager and model spawning are only available if rospy is installed. The lack of Gazebo and rospy only restricts functionalities related to interaction with the simulation in runtime and the creation of ROS-related tasks.

At the moment, ROS 2 is not supported for this purpose. To install ROS melodic, follow these installation instructions and install ros-melodic-desktop-full or separately install Gazebo and its ROS bindings as

sudo apt install gazebo9 libgazebo9-dev ros-melodic-gazebo-*

License

Procedural Generation for Gazebo is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.

For a list of other open source components included in Procedural Generation for Gazebo package, see the file 3rd-party-licenses.