ROS2 Integration with Simulation

[AnthonZh]

Robot integrated with ROS2

Motivation

As a developer, I want to:

Hook the simulated robot up to ROS2, using the same topic/service interface as the real vehicle.

So that I can:

Run our existing control and perception code against the simulated robot with no code changes required to swap between sim and real hardware.

Completion criteria

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

• Simulated robot publishes/subscribes on the same ROS2 topics as the real robot (thruster commands, state/odometry)
• Robot can be commanded via ROS2 in the sim environment
• Basic closed-loop test: send a thruster command, observe expected simulated response

Stretch

• Full sensor suite (camera, sonar, IMU, etc.) publishing at correct topic names/rates/formats
• Single launch file to bring up sim + ROS2 stack together

Timeline

TBD

Testing requirements

• Confirm topic names/types match the real robot's interface exactly
• Send known commands and verify expected robot behavior in sim
• Run existing control code against the simulated robot unmodified

Implementation

High-level overview

Set up whatever ROS2 bridge/interface the chosen simulation tool provides, map the simulated robot's control inputs and state/sensor outputs onto the same topic schema as the real vehicle, then validate against the existing control stack.

Checklist

• Set up ROS2 bridge/interface for the simulation tool
• Map thruster/control topics to sim inputs
• Map state/sensor outputs from sim to matching topics
• Verify topic names/types match real robot interface
• Test existing control code against simulated robot

Additional notes