Intro

Topics

• /nekton/pressure: Returns the result from the pressure sensor in Pascals

  • Type: sensor_msgs/msg/FluidPressure:

• /nekton/imu: Returns the result from the IMU, including a quaternion for orientation and 3D vectors for linear and angular acceleration

  • Type: sensor_msgs/msg/Imu

• /nekton/thrusters/id_<thruster_number>/input: Controls the power of the thruster; using a 0–100 range for now

  • Type: uv_gazebo_ros_plugins_msgs/msg/FloatStamped

• /nekton/sonar_forward: Contains 3D points (same height) where the sonar received returns

  • Type: Changed from sensor_msgs/msg/PointCloud2 to LaserScan

• /nekton/camera_forward/camera_info

• /nekton/camera_forward/image_raw

• /data: generated or fused data not coming directly from sensors (e.g., estimated position from sensor fusion or post-processed camera output)

Setup

• Build project

cd ~/vip_ws
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

Simulation

Gazebo will run in the background in order to use the GPU to run the physics simulation.

• Run hydrodynamics simulation

ros2 launch nekton_bringup test.launch

• For testing sonar, run simulation with flat ground plane and add an obstacle (Also less resource-intensive, no hydrodynamics calculations)

launch world:=empty

ros2 launch nekton_bringup odom_simulation.launch.py world:=sensor.world

Rviz

• Visualize in RViz

rviz2 nekton.rviz

GUI

The current plan is to recreate similar functionality to the previous icefin software:

Nekton UI

• Artificial Horizon
• Buttons
• Alerts
• Camera feed
• Sonar feed
• Depth and altimeter visualization
• Thruster visualization
• Camera and Sonar Mosaicing

• Icefin GUI
• Nekton GUI
• Nekton React GUI