EasyNav Summit Playground

Gazebo Harmonic simulation of a Robotnik Summit XL integrated with EasyNav and NavMap, in two worlds: the URJC excavation, an outdoor 3D terrain, and a small indoor warehouse. The package is self-contained: the robot model, the worlds, the maps and the EasyNav configurations are all included, so you only need this package plus EasyNav (core and plugins) and NavMap.

Supported ROS 2 distributions

This playground needs Gazebo Harmonic or newer, so it runs on Jazzy and later distributions, but not on Humble, whose Gazebo is Fortress. EasyNav itself (core and plugins) does run on Humble: only this simulation does not.

Build

From the ROS 2 workspace root:

rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y
colcon build --symlink-install --packages-up-to easynav_playground_summit
source install/setup.bash

Launch EasyNav

Each easynav_<config>.launch.yaml starts Gazebo, the Summit XL, EasyNav with that configuration and RViz2:

ros2 launch easynav_playground_summit easynav_bonxai_amcl.launch.yaml

Once RViz2 is up, send a goal with the 2D Goal Pose tool.

NavMap configurations

All of them plan with A* over the NavMap (maps/excavation_urjc.navmap).

Launch file	Controller	Localizer	Notes
easynav_bonxai_amcl.launch.yaml	Regulated Pure Pursuit	NavMap AMCL	AMCL corrects against the Bonxai 3D map (maps/excavation_urjc.pcd)
easynav_mppi.launch.yaml	MPPI	NavMap AMCL
easynav_mpc.launch.yaml	MPC	NavMap AMCL
easynav_gps.launch.yaml	Regulated Pure Pursuit	GPS (UKF)	FusionLocalizer fusing the GPS position, wheel odometry and IMU heading; no Bonxai map
easynav_navmap_dummy.launch.yaml	—	—	Only loads and shows maps/excavation_urjc_2.navmap

Warehouse configuration

easynav_warehouse_amcl.launch.yaml runs the Summit XL in the AWS RoboMaker small warehouse (worlds/small_warehouse.world), an indoor world with shelves, pallets and clutter:

ros2 launch easynav_playground_summit easynav_warehouse_amcl.launch.yaml

Launch file	Controller	Localizer	Maps
easynav_warehouse_amcl.launch.yaml	Regulated Pure Pursuit	NavMap AMCL	Flat NavMap from maps/warehouse.yaml; Bonxai maps/warehouse.pcd

The NavMap is flat, built from a 2D occupancy grid. Its obstacles filter keeps the static map and adds the points the sensors see within 3 m and below 1.2 m (max_range, max_height); the inflation filter (radius 2.0 m, scaling 1.5) keeps paths in the middle of the aisles. The RViz view (rviz/easynav_warehouse.rviz) shows the inflated layer. Localization error is about 0.15 m.

Localization

In the excavation, the terrain is smooth and the Bonxai cloud is sparse, so NavMap AMCL has little to correct against: it keeps the heading from the IMU, but its position can drift 0.5–1 m from the true one. The GPS configuration is the accurate one outdoors (about 0.15 m): its map frame is the Gazebo world's (latitude_origin/longitude_origin are the world's spherical_coordinates).

Launch arguments

Argument	Default	Description
params_file	Per launch file	EasyNav parameters file
rviz_config	Per launch file	RViz2 configuration file
gui	true	Set to false to run Gazebo headless
rviz	true	Set to false to skip RViz2

For example, to run headless with your own parameters:

ros2 launch easynav_playground_summit easynav_bonxai_amcl.launch.yaml gui:=false params_file:=/path/to/my.params.yaml

Real-time cycles

The configurations run EasyNav's real-time cycle (use_real_time: true) at 50 Hz (system_node.rt_freq; the default 200 Hz is too tight for this simulation). The recovery system watches it: if many cycles in a row start late, it holds the mission, asks for human assistance and finally cancels it. See "Real-time system setup" in the EasyNav docs.

Simulation only

To run Gazebo and the Summit XL without EasyNav or RViz2:

ros2 launch easynav_playground_summit gazebo_sim.launch.yaml

To spawn the robot in a running simulation, use summit.launch.yaml with a spawn pose (x, y, z).

The simulated Summit XL publishes:

Topic	Type
/front_laser/points	sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 (Robosense Helios 16P)
/front_camera/depth/color/points	sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 (ZED2)
/imu/data	sensor_msgs/Imu
/gps/fix	sensor_msgs/NavSatFix
/robotnik_base_control/odom	nav_msgs/Odometry
/ground_truth	nav_msgs/Odometry

It also publishes TF, and listens on /cmd_vel (geometry_msgs/Twist). twist_stamper forwards it to the diff drive controller, which takes TwistStamped on /robotnik_base_control/cmd_vel.

Building the warehouse maps

The warehouse maps were generated from the simulation with two tools of NavMap's navmap_tools:

1. navmap_map_builder builds the 3D cloud (warehouse.pcd, for Bonxai). It teleports the robot through the free space (gz service .../set_pose) and puts its lidar scans together at the ground-truth poses: a new position is taken when ground was seen around it and no obstacle is within --clearance.
2. navmap_map2d_from_pcd builds the 2D occupancy grid (warehouse.pgm/.yaml, for the flat NavMap) from that cloud: points between 0.1 and 1.2 m high are obstacles, free space is flood-filled from a seed inside the walls, and the rest is unknown.

To regenerate them (or build maps of another world), start the simulation without EasyNav and run the tools:

ros2 launch easynav_playground_summit gazebo_sim.launch.yaml gui:=false \
  world:=$(ros2 pkg prefix easynav_playground_summit)/share/easynav_playground_summit/worlds/small_warehouse.world
ros2 run navmap_tools navmap_map_builder /tmp/warehouse --world warehouse --model summit_xl \
  --cloud-topic /front_laser/points --ground-truth-topic /ground_truth
ros2 run navmap_tools navmap_map2d_from_pcd /tmp/warehouse.pcd /tmp/warehouse

Then copy warehouse.pcd, warehouse.pgm and warehouse.yaml to maps/. Run each tool with --help for its options (seed, resolution, height band, topics, headings).

Package layout

Directory	Contents
launch/	Launch files, in YAML
params/	EasyNav parameters, one file per configuration
maps/	Maps: excavation_urjc.navmap, excavation_urjc_2.navmap (NavMap) and excavation_urjc.pcd (Bonxai); warehouse.pgm/.yaml (occupancy grid for a flat NavMap) and warehouse.pcd (Bonxai)
rviz/	RViz2 configurations
config/	ros2_control controllers and ROS–Gazebo bridge topics
urdf/, meshes/	Summit XL model
worlds/, models/	URJC excavation and small warehouse worlds

Attribution and licensing

This package is licensed under Apache-2.0; see LICENSE. It includes third-party assets under their own licenses:

• The Summit XL model (urdf/, meshes/, config/) comes from robot_description and robotnik_sensors (ros2-devel branch), under the BSD 3-Clause license; see LICENSE-BSD.
• The URJC excavation world (worlds/urjc_excavation.world, models/urjc_excavation/) comes from urjc-excavation-world (main branch). Its license file is GPL-3.0; see models/urjc_excavation/LICENSE.
• The small warehouse world (worlds/small_warehouse.world, models/aws_robomaker_warehouse_*) comes from aws-robomaker-small-warehouse-world (ros1 branch), under the MIT-0 license; see models/LICENSE-aws-robomaker. Changes for Gazebo Sim: the roof was removed (the lidar and the GUI camera see inside), the Gazebo Sim system plugins, spherical coordinates and a sun were added, the physics step is 5 ms, and the floor model's (GroundB) invalid inertia was fixed.
• The warehouse maps (maps/warehouse.*) were generated from that world with navmap_tools (see "Building the warehouse maps").

Only the files these simulations use were copied. Changes to the robot model, all for the simulation:

• Paths point to this package; the sensors are reduced to the ones the Summit XL carries, and the unused omni-wheel option was dropped.
• Collisions are boxes and cylinders instead of meshes (mesh-vs-terrain contacts overflowed the physics engine), and the wheels have lower sideways friction, so the skid steering turns as commanded (wheel_separation_multiplier in config/summit_controllers.yaml is calibrated against Gazebo's ground truth).
• The ZED's two RGB cameras are not simulated (nothing uses them); the depth camera runs at quarter resolution and 10 Hz.
• The IMU has noise and its frame id, the GPS runs at 5 Hz, and the odometry has no zero variances: filters need realistic covariances.