How to use ros for simulation with dozens of robots

asked 2017-10-08 21:05:37 -0500

Hi everyone.

I am using virtual machine for running ros. In my project, I need to use a large group(perhapse 30 UAVs) of flying robots for simulating foraging behaviour of birds. I use hector quadrotor as a model and I use ROS jade with gazebo 5. But I found some problems for spawning more than 15 UAVs. The ROS will be terminated automatically. It seems like I was trying to spawn to many robots so that the ros problem crashes.

Does anyone have good ideas for doing large-scale robot simulation by using ros?

Thank you very much.

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Comments

Do you mean that Gazebo crashes? This may be a problem with running Gazebo in a VM. Is there any way that you can avoid using a VM? Maybe dual booting?

jayess ( 2017-10-09 02:23:06 -0500 )edit

Hi jayess. Thanks for your information. I can buy another linux desktop for this project. But I am wondering is that really possible to do simualtions with around 30 UAVs in ros-gazebo? So far, I can only spawn 5 UAV without crash. I am not sure whether there will be a difference with just desktop.

jasonwang538@gmail.com ( 2017-10-09 13:48:09 -0500 )edit

As far as I know, the Physics on gzserver goes on a single thread, so it's normal to crash if you add lots of robots.

Ruben Alves ( 2017-10-13 18:03:59 -0500 )edit

so it's normal to crash

Why is that normal? It could get slower perhaps, yes, but crash? That is never normal.

gvdhoorn ( 2017-10-14 02:44:26 -0500 )edit

Do you have any sort of log from the crashes? Also, why are you using Jade? It is old enough that it isn't supported, any more, and was targeted for an Ubuntu version that isn't supported any more. I would also note that the gazebo client could get very slow with that many simulated machines, especially on a VM.