Good news! We are launching a new platform to help you get started with powerful simulation software as convenient as possible. The platform provides you with a fully-isolated Desktop environment to test your autonomous driving strategy.

To get on-boarded, email Yuhao (yuhaoc@uvic.ca) to make an appointment to configure your simulation instance.

Environment Configuration

We know how frustrating and time-consuming to set up an environment to run our algorithms in simulation or on a car. Don’t worry, we already have a ready-to-race car and have built a simulation enrivonment for you to play with. As a club member, you can get access to our club server through a VLAN and use the RoboRacer Simulator assigned to you.

Install the ZeroTier client

Go the ZeroTier download page to download the installation package for your computer.

After installation, launch ZeroTier. From the configuration menu, click Join New Network… Type in the network ID of CAV Club Server. After authorizing your access request, you will be in our club’s virtuall local network and have access to the club server.

Access to Club server

With VLAN connection to our club server, we will offer you the following information:

  • Your local IP address
  • Club server IP address
  • Your SSH port
  • Your remote desk port
  • Your SSH user name
  • Your SSH password (you can change later)

With the above information, you can use two ways to access the club server: SSH and Remote Desk

SSH

You have two options to connect to the server:

  • SSH from your terminal
ssh -p [your ssh port] [your ssh user name]@[Club server IP address]
  • SSH with a client

Remote Desktop

Download a VNC viewer

Then connect to the club server with [Club server IP address] and [Your remote desk port]

Play with simulation

Enter the Command Line Interface of your remote machine, as mention in Section SSH.
Execute the following commands.

# Enter the sim_ws work space, you don't have to run this command if you are already in.
cd ~/sim_ws

# Source the ROS 2 Foxy environment setup script
source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash

# Source the local workspace setup script
source install/local_setup.bash

# Launch the F1Tenth gym bridge to connect simulation with ROS 2
ros2 launch f1tenth_gym_ros gym_bridge_launch.py

To play with your own algorithm, for example, gap following. Make sure you are under sim_ws before you execute the following commands

# Build the gap_follow package using colcon build system
colcon build --packages-select gap_follow

# Source the local workspace setup script to make the package available
source install/local_setup.bash

# Run the reactive_node.py script from the gap_follow package
ros2 run gap_follow reactive_node.py