CoInCar-Sim

An Open-Source Simulation Framework for Cooperatively Interacting Automobiles

This is the main readme of the ROS Simulation Framework CoInCar-Sim, developed jointly within the Priority Program 1835 "Cooperatively Interacting Automobiles" of the German Science Foundation (DFG) and within the TechCenter A-Drive funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The motivation and concept is explained in our publication [DOI] and these slides.

General Information

Installation requires Linux as operating system. The framework is developed and tested under Ubuntu 18.04.

Prerequisites

In order to use the framework, you need to install the following packages (installable via apt install)

• ROS (see http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Installation)
  • ros-melodic-desktop-full
  • ros-melodic-tf2-geometry-msgs
• Catkin tools, wstool and rosdep
  • python-catkin-tools (http://catkin-tools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html)
  • python-wstool (http://wiki.ros.org/wstool)
  • python-rosdep
• System Libraries
  • libgeographic-dev (for lanelet2)
  • libpugixml-dev (for lanelet2)
  • qt5-default
  • boost, boost-python and eigen are installed with ROS

Installation

This section describes the installation of the framework, assuming the prerequisites have already been installed.

For the full installation starting at a clean Ubuntu 18.04, have a look at how Travis does it in about 15 minutes:

1) Source ROS

• open a terminal
• source ROS
  • source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
  • you might want to add this to your .bashrc

2) Use the script to download and install the framework

• navigate to the folder where you want to place the framework
• execute the script
  • desired_folder$ bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coincar-sim/coincarsim_getting_started/release/setup_workspace.sh)
  • this creates a catkin workspace and downloads all source dependencies as defined in simulation_framework_latest.rosinstall

Alternative Installation

2a) Download the script and execute the local one

• download the desired *.rosinstall file from the folder ws_config (or clone this repo)
  • this config file contains the url of all source dependencies for their automated download in step 3
  • recommended: use simulation_framework_latest.rosinstall
• also download the script and do the above steps by starting
  • $ ./setup_workspace.sh simulation_framework_latest.rosinstall

2b) Set up and build the workspace yourself

• download the desired *.rosinstall file from the folder ws_config (or clone this repo)
  • this config file contains the url of all source dependencies for their automated download in step 3
  • recommended: use simulation_framework_latest.rosinstall
• set up a catkin workspace from the *.rosinstall file you just downloaded
  • $ mkdir catkin_ws && cd catkin_ws
  • catkin_ws$ wstool init src PATH_TO_ROSINSTALL_FILE.rosinstall
• build the workspace
  • catkin_ws$ catkin build
• source the build-files
  • catkin_ws$ source devel/setup.bash

Usage

3) Launch the framework

• source the build-files
  • catkin_ws$ source devel/setup.bash
• start the simulation framework by launching the main launchfile:
  • catkin_ws$ roslaunch simulation_initialization_ros_tool _whole_framework.launch
  • see the Readme of simulation_initialization_ros_tool for details about how the parts of the framework are launched

4) Play with it

• as further described in FIRST_STEPS.md

5) Contribute

• fork simulation_initialization_ros_tool and modify the launchfiles/settings/workspace config to simulate (parts of) your vehicle
• fork other components or create new vehicles to modify and/or extend the functionality

6) Stay tuned

• if you did choose the latest version, you can update it with
  • catkin_ws$ wstool update

Changelog

• June 2020: xenial support has been dropped in rosinterface_handler with this commit, so it is also dropped here; as a temporary solution, you might work with an old commit of rosinterface_handler

License

See the respective packages for license issues.

Citation

If you are using CoInCar-Sim for scientific research, we would be pleased if you would cite our publication [DOI]:

@inproceedings{Naumann2018CoInCarSim,
  title     = {{C}o{I}n{C}ar-{S}im: An Open-Source Simulation Framework for Cooperatively Interacting Automobiles},
  author    = {M. {Naumann} and F. {Poggenhans} and M. {Lauer} and C. {Stiller}},
  booktitle = {Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Intelligent Vehicles},
  year      = {2018},
  address   = {Changshu, China},
  month     = {June},
  pages     = {1879--1884},
  doi       = {10.1109/IVS.2018.8500405}
}