NASA Challenge_[@utkrishtjain]_[Custom Models & Gazebo Plugins for Realistic Simulations] (Ref Issue: #46)

[jasmeet0915]

Associted Feature Request Issue: #46

This PR adds a set of custom Gazebo Plugins that aim at making the simulation more realistic. Custom models made from real elevation data (From NASA's Planetary Data System) of celestial bodies like Moon and Mars is also added.

Demo Gif showing curiosity rover on an actual terrain model of a patch of Gale Crater on Mars with Dust Storms and changing daylight. Observe how the dust particles affect the camera images and change in daylight causes lens flare artifacts as well

Demo Gif showing curiosity rover on an actual terrain model of a patch of Gale Crater on Mars with our custom changing daylight plugin. Observe how the the color of the sky (scene in Gazebo) changes based of time of day and the position of the sun changes as well causing shadows all over the terrain. The changing daylight causes lens flare artifacts in the camera RGB image as well

Main Highlights

Models of Martian Terrain made from elevation data from HiRISE Images on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO):

Click to view images of the Terrain Models made from data of a patch of Gale Crater on Mars

Model of Lunar Terrain made from elevation data LOLA on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO):

Click to view images of the Terrain Models made from data of Southern region of Moon which is the main target for NASA's Artemis Missions

DustManager GUI Plugin simulating weather conditions like Dust Storms on Mars using ParticleEmitters in Gazebo

• This plugin makes use of ParticleEmitters to create weather conditions like dust storms which actually affect the simulated sensor data by adding noise (demonstrated in the gif below)
• An easy-to-use GUI is also added to make it easy for the user to play around with different properties like wind speed, density and color of the particles to create different weather conditions (demonstrated in the gif below)

Click to view gif of the DustStorm plugin in action of martian terrain with the curiosity rover model

DayLightManager GUI Plugin for simulating Time of Day and lighting conditions

• The DayLightManager plugin for Gazebo simulates the Sun's trajectory based on the time of day and the observer's latitude, providing a realistic and dynamic representation of sunlight.
• The plugin also changes Gazebo's scene colors to match changing sky colors and the plugin GUI allows you to set a scaling factor for the time of day to simulate multiple day cycles in a short period of time. The time of day is also available on a topic as gz.msgs.Time
• Added Lens Flare Plugin (Add Lens Flare System gazebosim/gz-sim#1933) to the Rover's Camera sensors which is affected in real time by the moving sun throughout the time of day

Click to view gif of the TimeOfDay plugin in action on martian terrain with the curiosity rover model

Side Quests

• Ported from Ignition Fortress to Gz Harmonic
• gz_ros2_control supprot for Gz Harmonic: https://github.com/jasmeet0915/gz_ros2_control

[mkhansenbot]

Thank you for your submission. I know it is still a Draft, so I'm not officially reviewing it yet, however there are a couple of things needed for our CI to build your demo, and to follow our contribution guidelines. 1) Please open a feature request issue in this repo describing the feature. 2) Please rebase to main and update your commit messages to refer to the issue # you created. 3) Add that issue # in the title of this PR also. 4) Please add a Dockerfile or docker-compose.yaml and a build.sh script to build your Docker image. Also add a run.sh script to run the demo. (Please see the updated README in this repo.) 5. Don't forget to add a README with relevant details for users to understand what the demo does and how to run it. Thanks!

[mkhansenbot]

I know this is still a draft, but please add a Dockerfile or a docker-compose.yaml and a build.sh script so the CI can build it automatically. See the README of this repo for details.

[jasmeet0915]

@mkhansenbot all the requested changes have been made and the PR updated

[mkhansenbot]

@jasmeet0915 - I just changed the build workflow to cd into the folder first, then rebased your branch

CI now passing, needs code review