News

UWSim website and wiki are back

As some of you may have noticed, UWSim wiki and website were suffering technical difficulties during the last weeks. This was caused by a server update that broke part of the database and made the information unavailable for a short time. Fortunately, we were able to restore the information from a backup and now everything should be working as usual. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.

UWSim website and wiki are back

As some of you may have noticed, UWSim wiki and website were suffering technical difficulties during the last weeks. This was caused by a server update that broke part of the database and made the information unavailable for a short time. Fortunately, we were able to restore the information from a backup and now everything should be working as usual. Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.

UWSim Virtual Machine

We have created a virtual machine with Ubuntu Mate 14.04 and UWSim 1.4.1 already installed and working. The virtual machine is available to download here, so you can try UWSim without a linux distribution. It was created with VirtualBox so it is recommended to use it for virtualization, the user and password is "uwsim". Once the virtual machine is imported and launched in your system just open a terminal and run "roscore &" and "rosrun uwsim uwsim", if everything is OK a window with the simulator will open. It is important to remember there is a significant performance drop in virtual machines, so don’t surprise if the FPS is low.

UWSim Virtual Machine

We have created a virtual machine with Ubuntu Mate 14.04 and UWSim 1.4.1 already installed and working. The virtual machine is available to download here, so you can try UWSim without a linux distribution. It was created with VirtualBox so it is recommended to use it for virtualization, the user and password is "uwsim". Once the virtual machine is imported and launched in your system just open a terminal and run "roscore &" and "rosrun uwsim uwsim", if everything is OK a window with the simulator will open. It is important to remember there is a significant performance drop in virtual machines, so don’t surprise if the FPS is low.

UWSim Let's do it: pipe following

As we announced in the last news we have added a new tutorial to start working with UWSim to our wiki. In this case instead of providing the full code, the tutorial proposes a series of guided exercises to develop a code to control the girona500 and follow green pipes using vision as main input. Barebones for the partial solutions are provided, so you can focus on the coding part. The exercises also use the benchmarking module so it is possible to evaluate the algorithm while developing. A virtual machine is also provided with the UWSim simulator, benchmarking module and exercises barebones. The tutorial can be followed at Let's do it: pipe following.

UWSim Let's do it: pipe following

As we announced in the last news we have added a new tutorial to start working with UWSim to our wiki. In this case instead of providing the full code, the tutorial proposes a series of guided exercises to develop a code to control the girona500 and follow green pipes using vision as main input. Barebones for the partial solutions are provided, so you can focus on the coding part. The exercises also use the benchmarking module so it is possible to evaluate the algorithm while developing. A virtual machine is also provided with the UWSim simulator, benchmarking module and exercises barebones. The tutorial can be followed at Let's do it: pipe following.

UWSim pipe following scenes available

Three new scenes have been added to the website. They can be downloaded running the scene installer script like this: "./installScene -s SCENE". These scenes show three different scenarios for pipe following with different difficulty. In pipefollowing_basic.uws a simple straight green pipe is placed at the seafloor. pipefollowing_heights.uws adds pipe sections so the depth of the pipe changes. Finally pipefollowing_turns.uws adds L joints so the vehicle must turn to follow the pipe.

Scenes

In each scene the vehicle girona500 is placed in an end of the pipe in order to follow until the end of it. Furthermore the pipes are green in order to make it easier to detect and segment them using a virtual camera already present in the vehicle. Shortly we will add a series of tutorial exercises that will help to understand the use of some features such as reading sensors, benchmarking and dynamics.

UWSim pipe following scenes available

Three new scenes have been added to the website. They can be downloaded running the scene installer script like this: "./installScene -s SCENE". These scenes show three different scenarios for pipe following with different difficulty. In pipefollowing_basic.uws a simple straight green pipe is placed at the seafloor. pipefollowing_heights.uws adds pipe sections so the depth of the pipe changes. Finally pipefollowing_turns.uws adds L joints so the vehicle must turn to follow the pipe.

Scenes

In each scene the vehicle girona500 is placed in an end of the pipe in order to follow until the end of it. Furthermore the pipes are green in order to make it easier to detect and segment them using a virtual camera already present in the vehicle. Shortly we will add a series of tutorial exercises that will help to understand the use of some features such as reading sensors, benchmarking and dynamics.

UWSim interacting with Matlab-Simulink

A new tutorial for Matlab-Simulink is available in our wiki. Although using Matlab-Simulink with ROS was possible long ago, it was hard due to problems with libraries and version compatibility. Since Matlab added the full ROS support in R2015a interfacing with anything that uses ROS, for instance UWSim, is really simple!. Just adding a few "boxes" with publishers and subscribers in Simulink... et voila! we have a controller for the vehicle. This tutorial covers how to create a simulink model for controlling a vehicle in UWSim from scratch using the Robotic System Toolbox.

Take a look at the final result of the tutorial in this video:

UWSim interacting with Matlab-Simulink

A new tutorial for Matlab-Simulink is available in our wiki. Although using Matlab-Simulink with ROS was possible long ago, it was hard due to problems with libraries and version compatibility. Since Matlab added the full ROS support in R2015a interfacing with anything that uses ROS, for instance UWSim, is really simple!. Just adding a few "boxes" with publishers and subscribers in Simulink... et voila! we have a controller for the vehicle. This tutorial covers how to create a simulink model for controlling a vehicle in UWSim from scratch using the Robotic System Toolbox.

Take a look at the final result of the tutorial in this video:

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