FSAE-Unity-Simulation Guide

0. Prerequisite

At this stage, you should already installed Ubuntu 22.04 and ROS2 humble.

1. Clone Repository

You need both Autonomous and FSAE-Unity-Simulation repository, under same directory.

Don't forget to switch to correct branches !

mkdir projects
cd projects/

git clone https://github.com/UOA-FSAE/autonomous.git
git clone https://github.com/UOA-FSAE/FSAE-Unity-Simulation.git

cd autonomous/
git checkout nightly

Build all packages at Root of Autonomous Repo with colcon build , It should finish without error.

Note

• Use colcon build --parallel-workers Number to avoid machine freeze/crash.
• Some packages/msgs we used are not included in default installation of ROS2. Some of them are listed below:

sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-foxglove-bridge \
ros-$ROS_DISTRO-foxglove-msgs \
ros-$ROS_DISTRO-ackermann-msgs

2. Install Softwares

Follow the instructions to install Unity Hub and Foxglove on linux. You also need to creat an individual/student account to use them free.

3. Unity Setup

1. Launch Unity Hub just installed and Log in

2. Go to Projects -> Add Projects, then select FSAE-Unity-Simulation folder

3. A recommended Unity Editor version will be suggested, install.

4. Double click to open the project. You should see a window like this

   

5. In the lower left corner, There is a content library. Scroll down and click on Scenes.

   

6. Drag the TrackSimulator scene into hierachy in the upper left region. Then right click the Untitled scene and remove it.

   

4. Run Unity

1. Click the play button (Little Triangle) in the Unity Editor. Wait for it to fully load.
2. Open a terminal and type:

ros2 topic list

3. The output should be this:

/parameter_events
/race_controller/create
/race_controller/race_stats
/race_controller/reset
/rosout

4. Go the root of Autonomus repo, open a terminal and run:

. unity_qucik_start.sh

5. After several terminal windows pop up, the Simulation should start running. If not, check each of the window for any error messages.

Note

If the terminal only shows /parameter_events and /rosout, it means the connection between Unity and ROS2 is not established.

A likely reason is that the ROS Domain IDs don't match. Unity uses ROS Domain ID 0. You can open .bashrc file in home directory and add the following to the end.

export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=0

Some members also find launching Unityhub from terminal can be helpful

unityhub

5. Visualize Data

1. Open Foxglove, click open connections -> Foxglove Web Socket -> Open.
2. Click on the Panel Tab -> Topics
3. Click to open the eyes of each topic to visualize their data.