Starting the simulation system VEROSIM

The VEROSIM installation provides a startup script runVEROSIM.sh to start the simulation system. It initializes environment variables to load 3rd party dependencies, e.g. ROS, MATLAB/Simulink or OpenCV. To start VEROSIM just execute runVEROSIM.sh:

user@host:~$ cd VEROSIM
user@host:~/VEROSIM$ ./runVEROSIM.sh

Verbose start

By default VEROSIM redirects status information and debug messages to a specialized window that is available inside the graphical user interface. In cases where additional information about the running process is needed, all these messages can also be printed to the terminal. The argument -PrintDbgMsgs is applicable to activate the debug output by setting it to the value 1:

user@host:~$ cd VEROSIM
user@host:~/VEROSIM$ ./runVEROSIM.sh -PrintDbgMsgs 1

Using environment variables

It might be necessary to set environment variables to initialize 3rd party libraries. For example, ROS requires the variable ROS_MASTER_URI to be set if a roscore is executed on a different system than the one you intend to use the simulation system on. For this use case we will consider the following setup:

Computer IPv4 address Hostname Description
Master 192.168.0.1 master.reconcell.eu Master computer running roscore that provides the interfaces to control actors
Simulation 192.168.0.2 sim.reconcell.eu Simulation computer running VEROSIM

The user reconcell intends to start VEROSIM on the Simulation Computer but requires ROS functionality that is provided by a roscore on the Master Computer. To accomplish this, the user needs to export the ROS_MASTER_URI before executing runVEROSIM.sh:

reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~$ cd VEROSIM
reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~/VEROSIM$ export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://192.168.0.1:11311/
reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~/VEROSIM$ ./runVEROSIM.sh

Due to the use of hostnames, the following commands can be used to achieve the same. The advantage is better readability in larger network setups.

reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~$ cd VEROSIM
reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~/VEROSIM$ export ROS_MASTER_URI=http://master.reconcell.eu:11311/
reconcell@sim.reconcell.eu:~/VEROSIM$ ./runVEROSIM.sh