Gazebo ROS package structure

Question

I've just started to learn ROS using Lunar distribution on an Ubuntu 16.04.

I need to use Gazebo with ROS to do my academic exercises.

Reading the Tutorial: Using roslaunch to start Gazebo, world files and URDF models, on section, Creating your own Gazebo ROS Package, I've found this text:

"Everything concerning your robot's model and description is located, as per ROS standards, in a package named /MYROBOT_description ..."

I have tried to find those ROS standards but I don't know where they are.

Is there any standard to add a robot to a ROS package? Where can I find more information about it?

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Originally posted by Elric on ROS Answers with karma: 71 on 2018-05-15

Post score: 0

Answer 1

This is not a standard for package layout, but for naming.

If there is a standard, it would be REP-144 - ROS Package Naming. Under section [Naming Rules](REP-144 - ROS Package Naming, it says:

Special Suffixes:

• a package containing the URDF and meshes of a robot should be named <name_of_the_robot>_description, e.g pr2_description

So this basically says: packages with robot models should be called X_description.

That is most likely what the tutorial you linked refers to.

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Edit:

Thanks. I'm lost with this. It's hard to start learning ROS.

Note btw: I just referred to the REP as it's a convenient document. The custom / convention of naming pkgs with robot models in them description packages has existed since long before REP-144 was written.

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Originally posted by gvdhoorn with karma: 86574 on 2018-05-15

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by Elric on 2018-05-15:
Ok. Thanks. I'm lost with this. It's hard to start learning ROS.

Comment by Elric on 2018-05-15:
I have followed the tutorial, but when I run: me@myComputer:~/catkin_ws$ roslaunch MYROBOT_gazebo MYROBOT.launch. I get: RLException: [MYROBOT.launch] is neither a launch file in package [MYROBOT_gazebo] nor is [MYROBOT_gazebo] a launch file name. Any idea?

Comment by gvdhoorn on 2018-05-15:
No idea. But just a comment: you're not required to use MYROBOT everywhere. It's just a placeholder for whatever name you'd actually want/need. It's similar to the X I used everywhere in my answer.