About Gazebo

Added in version Jazzy: This section.

Warning

This topic is under construction and this might not even be its final form. Please feel free to open an issue if you spot any typos or other problems.

See also

Click here for the official docs from the developers of Gazebo.

Gazebo is a robot simulator frequently mentioned when ROS2 is used. They are officially different projects although there are clear connections.

Until ROS2 Humble, Gazebo worked in a different way and had a different name. The older project has been renamed to Gazebo Classic. You can see more about the reasons behind this in the announcement “A new era for Gazebo”.

Warning

This means that you will find a large amount of legacy code online, for instance with the prefix ign. This clearly won’t work for Gazebo Harmonic without proper adjustments.

Given that this new way to use Gazebo has started in ROS2 Jazzy, we can expect that some edges will be rough and some functionalities missing. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to believe this will be the way to operate Gazebo in the foreseeable future.

For ROS2 Jazzy, we use Gazebo Harmonic. This replicates the strategy of having a LTS version for a given piece of software. This makes it easier for the users to learn and trust a platform without it constantly changing.

Beauty and usability are in the eyes of the beholder. That said, one major improvement in Gazebo is the motion towards not needing two robot description formats. It has always been the case that a robot would have to be described twice, once for ROS2 and another for Gazebo Classic. Although this switch might still be ongoing and some more advanced functionalities might be missing, we will work with a single .sdf whenever possible.

If some of these terms are not clear to you now, worry not. They will become clearer as we progress in the tutorials.