simulation_player

This package provides a graphical interface to simulate time advancement when running the plugins provided. The graphical interface is implemented as an rviz2 panel.

Building

Place the package in the remap_ws/src; then, from remap_ws

$ rosdep init

$ rosdep update

$ rosdep install --from-paths src/simulation_player

$ colcon build --packages-select simulation_player

Usage

Be sure you have source the correct setup.bash before playing with the simulation player!

This tool is meant as part of the reMap framework. It implements an rviz2 panel exposing the commands to control the execution of the demo. The user can either decide to let the plugins publish their information according to their rate or to stop the execution and advance, when desired, forward in time by a custom time step.

In order to add the panel, open the panel menu in the rviz2 top bar, select Add new panel and among all the available panels proceed with SimulationPlayer from the simulation_player package. The panel will appear on the bottom of the left column: use the pointer to enlarge it.

The interface offers five different buttons:

• Start Sim stops the natural execution of the plugins, starting the simulation mode;
• Set Step sets the simulation step size, that is, the amount of time you request to advance to the simulation by clicking on Forward;
• Forward executes a simulation step;
• Backward executes a reversed simulation step;
• Stop Sim leaves simulation mode, going back to the default execution mode for the plugins.