A ROS-based Control Application for a Robotic Platform Using the Gazebo 3D Simulator

This paper presents a ROS-based control application for a robotic platform, using the Gazebo 3D simulator that will allow a user to see and understand the simulation and moving of a mobile robot through a predefined map before being used in the real world. Usually, developers in the field of robotics need to test, verify and validate the dynamics of the robot in specific environments. Nowadays, the availability of virtual tools allows developers to create virtual working environments, and to do a targeted simulation of robots' dynamics. This approach highly reduces the times necessary for preparing the robot-specific content (design, deployment, environment), and afterwards the robot dynamics debugging. In our paper, we will detail these steps while considering the particulars of the mobile robot that is under development. For this, we created a replica of our robot simulated in Gazebo, a map of the robot's working environment, and, we have provided support for the robot's main applications: navigation, exploration, and interaction with sensors. All these elements are essential to simulate and visualize the robot's activity within a virtual working environment before the robot will be used in its target actual environment.