Multi-Robot Simulation with simple navigator

A simple 2D multi-AGVs simulator with Rviz2 on ROS2 humble, a simple navigator node called simple_path_planner was used to replace nav2. There are no any sensors plugin involved. The navigator moved based on changing the robot base_footprint at certain period of time with predefined speed. battery_simulator node had been created to calculate the battery level for both charging and draining.

This packages also involved the application of free_fleet server and client, prepared for itegration with open-rmf

Required packages:

• [free_fleet] (https://github.com/open-rmf/free_fleet)
• [open-rmf] (https://github.com/open-rmf/rmf)
• [nav2] (https://github.com/ros-navigation/navigation2/tree/main) - this is for nav2 navigate_to_pose interface required by free_fleet
• [xacro]

Launching the Simulation

To start the simulation and spawn robots, each with its own navigation stack, run the following command:

ros2 launch robot_bringup robots.launch.py

This command initializes the robots in predefined namespaces and positions as configured in the robots.yaml file under robot_bringup/config.

Navigating the Robots

To navigate the robots in RViz:

1. Open RViz.
2. In the Tools Properties panel, adjust the 2D Goal Pose topic to /{namespace}/goal_pose where {namespace} corresponds to the robot's namespace (AGV1, AGV2, AGV3, etc.).

This setup allows you to control each robot individually by setting goals within their respective namespaces.

3. Launch the navigation action client using CLI, for example for AGV1

ros2 run robot_control fake_action_client --ros-args -r __ns:=/AGV1

Adding More Robots

To add more robots to the simulation:

1. Navigate to robot_bringup/config/robots.yaml.
2. Add a new entry for each robot with the following parameters:
   • namespace: Unique identifier for the robot (e.g., AGV8).
   • initial_pose_x: Starting x-coordinate of the robot.
   • initial_pose_y: Starting y-coordinate of the robot.

Example Entry:

- namespace: AGV8
  initial_position:
    x: 3
    y: 0

Visualizing Multiple Robots

All robots can be visualized simultaneously in a single RViz window, which facilitates monitoring and interaction across the simulated environment.

Moving the Robot

For example:

ros2 run ff_examples_ros2 send_destination_request.py -f v1 -r AGV1 -x 3 -y 2 --yaw 0.0 -i 11125 -l L1

This is the example to move robot AGV1 in v1 fleet at L1 floor number to position (3,2) with facing angle 0

Open-RMF

To start simulation with open_rmf

• To start fleet manager, server and rviz

ros2 launch rmf_sim warehouse_sim.launch.xml

• To start the robots, in another terminal

ros2 launch robot_bringup robots.launch.py

• To send single destination to robots For go_to_palce, it will move the robot to target position. -F = fleet name, -R = robot name, -p = destination

ros2 run rmf_demos_tasks dispatch_go_to_place -F v1 -R AGV15 -p r60

Process of spawnming 7 robots and moving them using go_to_place

TO-DO

1. Create own fleet adapter to remove the dependency of free_fleet to run the simulation. (Clients didnt register to server while client node bringup correctly, robot position not updated in fleet_state)

Can see that AGV6 was not registered and AGV3 and 4 stop to update their

2. Expand the layout
3. Robot travelling time and distance record per task