Gazebo Physics : Physics classes and functions for robot applications

Maintainer: scpeters AT openrobotics DOT org

Build	Status
Test coverage
Ubuntu Jammy
Homebrew
Windows

Gazebo Physics, a component of Gazebo, provides an abstract physics interface designed to support simulation and rapid development of robot applications.

Table of Contents

Motivation

Features

Install

Usage

Folder Structure

Code of Conduct

Contributing

Versioning

License

Motivation

Many physics simulation software libraries have been designed for different applications (gaming, robotics, science) and with different features (rigid or deformable contact, 2d or 3d). Gazebo Physics is designed on the premise that there is not a single physics engine that is universally best for all simulation contexts. It should be possible to support a different set of features for each physics engine according to its capabilities. A physics engine can then be chosen for each application based on its context.

Features

Gazebo Physics provides the following functionality:

• Granular definition of physics engine features as optional API's.
• Plugin interface for loading physics engines with requested features at runtime.
• Features for common aspects of rigid body dynamic simulation
  • Construct model from SDFormat file.
  • Collision shapes (such as box, sphere, cylinder, capsule, ellipsoid, mesh, heightmap).
  • Joint types (such as revolute, prismatic, fixed, ball, screw, universal).
  • Step simulation, get/set state, apply inputs.
• Reference implementation of physics plugin using dartsim.
• A custom physics engine focused on fast kinematics of large environments, the Trivial Physics Engine.
• CompositeData structures for efficiently using native types in API.

Install

See the installation tutorial.

Usage

Please refer to the examples directory.

Documentation

API and tutorials can be found at https://gazebosim.org/libs/physics.

You can also generate the documentation from a clone of this repository by following these steps.

1. You will need Doxygen. On Ubuntu Doxygen can be installed using

   sudo apt-get install doxygen
   

2. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-physics -b main
   

3. Configure and build the documentation.

   cd gz-physics; mkdir build; cd build; cmake ../; make doc
   

4. View the documentation by running the following command from the build directory.

   firefox doxygen/html/index.html
   

Testing

Follow these steps to run tests and static code analysis in your clone of this repository.

1. Follow the source install instruction.

2. Run tests.

   make test
   

3. Static code checker.

   make codecheck
   

Folder Structure

Refer to the following table for information about important directories and files in this repository.

gz-physics
├── bullet                    Files for bullet plugin component.
├── bullet-featherstone       Files for bullet-featherstone plugin component.
├── dartsim                   Files for dartsim plugin component.
├── example                   Examples about how to use the library
├── heightmap                 Heightmap related header files.
├── include/gz/physics        Header files.
├── mesh                      Files for mesh component.
├── resources                 Model and mesh resource files used by tests.
├── sdf                       Files for sdf component.
├── src                       Source files and unit tests.
├── test
│    ├── benchmark            Benchmark tests.
│    ├── integration          Integration tests.
│    ├── performance          Performance tests.
│    ├── plugins              Plugins used in tests.
│    ├── regression           Regression tests.
│    └── static_assert        Tests involving compilation failures.
├── tpe
│    ├── lib                  Implementation of TPE engine.
│    └── plugin               Files for TPE plugin component.
├── tutorials                 Tutorials, written in markdown.
├── Changelog.md              Changelog.
└── CMakeLists.txt            CMake build script.

Contributing

Please see the contribution guide.

Code of Conduct

Please see CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Versioning

This library uses Semantic Versioning. Additionally, this library is part of the Gazebo project which periodically releases a versioned set of compatible and complimentary libraries. See the Gazebo website for version and release information.

License

This library is licensed under Apache 2.0. See also the LICENSE file.