Turtlebot simulator first steps - nstiurca/ros-turtlebot-tutorial GitHub Wiki

This page describes how to get the Turtlebot simulator up and running. This is based loosely on a tutorial from turtlebot.com.

First, make sure you have ros-indigo-desktop-full installed (or at least ros-indigo-desktop). Then, you also need

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-turtlebot-apps ros-indigo-turtlebot-rviz-launchers ros-indigo-turtlebot-gazebo

Hopefully that worked, so fire up the simulator from a terminal

roscore &
export TURTLEBOT_GAZEBO_WORLD_FILE=/opt/ros/indigo/share/turtlebot_gazebo/worlds/playground.world
roslaunch turtlebot_gazebo turtlebot_world.launch

At this point, you can play around with the interface. In the default view--indicated by the highlighted arrow in the toolbar at the top of Gazebo--you can move the camera around. You can also switch to the translate/rotate/scale modes--they are adjacent on the same toolbar--which allow you to manipulate objects in the world. You can also change properties from the World tab in the left side-pane of Gazebo. Finally, you can insert new objects from the Insert tab of that same pane.