This tutorial is to implement the Darwin-OP Color Ball following on Gazebo. This tutorial assumes that you have Gazebo - version 1.7.1 installed and also Github Installed and have basic knowledge of Gazebo. To understand Gazebo you can follow the tutorials I have authored here.
To understand how this tutorial works and what it is doing follow this tutorial : Simulation on Gazebo
Clone from the Git repository :
git clone https://github.com/Bharadwaj-Ramesh/Darwin_OP.git
Copy the contents to the gazebo Models directory
cp -r Darwin_OP ~/.gazebo/models/
Go into the directory where everything is copied into
cd ~/.gazebo/models/Darwin_OP/Darwin-OP\ tracking\ Ball
Create a build directory and compile the plugins in the build directory.
mkdir build cd build cmake .. make
Add the plugins to Gazebo plugin path.
export GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH=`pwd`:$GAZEBO_PLUGIN_PATH
Move the world file to the build directory.
cd .. cp darwinBallFollow build cd build
Open the world file that we just copied using Gazebo in pause state.
gazebo -u darwinBallFollow
Run the world and you will see that the Darwin-OP walks to the ball.
The current version has friction issues and hence the Darwin is not programmed to turn towards the ball if it is not at the center of the Darwin-OP's frame. But it walks closest(.1m) to the ball and stops.