Gazebo

gazebo

The sim half of the robium nav-vertical trial run: modern Gazebo (the gz tools — Gazebo Classic/gazebo11 is a separate, EOL project and out of scope everywhere in this skill) for building SDF worlds and models, attaching sensors, bridging topics to ROS 2 via ros_gz, spawning robots, and running headless. As of this session, Gazebo's current named releases are Jetty (LTS, Sep 2025 – May 2031), Ionic (standard support, Sep 2024 – Dec 2026), and Harmonic (LTS, Sep 2023 – May 2029) — verified by direct curl of gazebosim.org/docs/all/releases/ this session, which also lists the older Fortress LTS (Sep 2021 – May 2027) still inside its support window. Jetty is now the newest LTS, one release past the Harmonic/Ionic line named in this skill's description; re-verify the release list before trusting any of this paragraph in a future session; see references/worlds-and-models.md's sourcing note. The robium nav vertical (nav2 skill) targets ROS 2 Jazzy Jalisco, whose paired Gazebo release is Harmonic — the ros_gz jazzy branch ships prebuilt binaries for that pairing from packages.ros.org, confirmed by direct fetch of the ros_gz README this session (see References). This skill's nav-facing snippets and examples target Jazzy + Harmonic for that reason; Ionic (paired with Kilted) is nearing its Dec 2026 EOL, and Jetty (the newest LTS) pairs with Lyrical or Rolling, not Jazzy — don't pick either for a new Jazzy-based project without re-checking the table first.

When to use this skill

• Building or editing an SDF world or model, adding a sensor (lidar, camera, IMU, contact) to a robot, wiring a ros_gz bridge, spawning a robot into a running simulation, or running Gazebo headless/server-only.
• The trigger phrases in the description: 'gazebo', 'gz sim', 'ros_gz', 'simulate the robot', 'add a lidar to the sim'.
• Someone mentions Gazebo Classic tutorials, gazebo11, or the old libgazebo_ros_* plugin names — flag that they don't apply here (Classic is EOL) and redirect to this skill's modern gz/ros_gz equivalents.
• Cross-references — go to the sibling skill instead when the question is:
  • Which simulator to use at all (Gazebo vs. Isaac Sim vs. something else) → the simulation skill. This skill assumes Gazebo has already been chosen.
  • Generic ROS 2 mechanics the bridge or a spawned robot's launch file rides on (workspaces, colcon, launch files, TF2 concepts, QoS) → ros2. This skill's only TF content is what the ros_gz bridge or a sim plugin itself publishes.
  • Navigation behavior once sensor data is flowing (costmaps, AMCL, behavior trees) → nav2. This skill stops at "sensor topics are bridged and correctly framed"; what Nav2 does with them is nav2's territory.
  • Isaac Sim specifically → isaac-sim.
  • Running gz/ros_gz inside Docker, GPU passthrough for the container, or macOS/remote-server environment strategy → environments. This skill's Platform gotchas section only notes where Docker changes gz's own behavior (rendering, display), not how to set the container up.
  • The whole-stack decision this feeds into → architect (routes here).

Key directives

• Delegation posture: embed + links. SDF anatomy, sensor tags, and the ros_gz bridge's CLI/YAML syntax live in this skill's references in depth — no single upstream page walks through all three as one coherent unit for a new project — but every tag, default value, and parameter table links back to gazebosim.org, the sdformat spec, or the gazebosim/ros_gz GitHub repo rather than being retyped from memory. See References.
• Never recommend Gazebo Classic (gazebo11). It reached end-of-life; its plugin names (libgazebo_ros_*), world format quirks, and tutorials do not carry over to modern gz. If a search result or an old tutorial mentions Classic, say so explicitly and translate to the modern equivalent rather than silently using Classic syntax.
• Bridge every topic explicitly, via a config file, not ad-hoc CLI bridges. A one-off ros2 run ros_gz_bridge parameter_bridge /topic@ros_type@gz_type per topic is fine for a five-minute test, but a real project's bridge set (clock, cmd_vel, odom, tf, every sensor) belongs in one YAML config file passed via the config_file parameter — it's the single reviewable place that states exactly what's bridged, in which direction, and at what QoS, and it survives a robot rename without hunting down scattered ros2 run invocations. See examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml and references/ros2-bridge.md.
• Sensor rates and frames must match the real target robot, not simulator defaults. A lidar simulated at the tutorial's default rate/FOV, or a camera with the wrong resolution, produces a stack that "works in sim" and then behaves differently the moment it meets real sensor data or a downstream consumer (Nav2's costmap update rate, a perception model's expected input size) tuned for the real hardware's datasheet. Pull the real sensor's rate/FOV/range/frame from its datasheet before simulating it — this is the simulation skill's correctness-checklist territory; this skill only supplies the SDF tags to encode whatever numbers that check produces.
• Never write gz release numbers, EOL dates, or ROS 2/Gazebo pairings from memory. They change with every named release (Jetty's arrival moved Harmonic and Ionic down a rung since this skill's description was written). Verify against gazebosim.org/docs/all/releases/ and the gazebosim/ros_gz README's compatibility table before repeating a claim in a real project — every example in this skill is marked status: unverified for exactly this reason, and each reference states how its claims were checked this session.

Quick start

1. Confirm the gz release paired with your ROS 2 distro. Check the compatibility table in references/ros2-bridge.md (sourced from the gazebosim/ros_gz README) before installing anything — for the Jazzy-based nav vertical this skill targets, that's Gazebo Harmonic:

sudo apt-get install ros-jazzy-ros-gz

2. Write or copy a world. Start from examples/diffdrive-world-snippet.sdf (a minimal differential-drive robot with lidar and IMU sensors) and see references/worlds-and-models.md for SDF anatomy.

3. Run it headless and bridge topics. See the two usage patterns below — "Run a world headless" and "Bridge sensor topics to ROS 2" — using examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml as the bridge's config_file.

4. Verify data is flowing with ros2 topic echo /scan (or /imu, /odom) before wiring anything downstream (Nav2, a perception node) to it.

Usage patterns

Run a world headless. gz sim -s -r <world>.sdf starts the simulation server only (-s, "headless mode" — overrides -g if present) with the simulation already playing (-r, "run simulation on start"); add --headless-rendering (requires OGRE2, the default render engine) when the world has camera or lidar sensors and there's no X server — see Platform gotchas. This is the mode a CI job or a remote/cloud run should use; source verified from the gz-sim CLI's own help text (src/cmd/cmdsim.rb.in, fetched directly this session). See references/worlds-and-models.md.

Spawn a robot from SDF/URDF. Launch Gazebo, then use ros_gz_sim's create executable rather than hand-rolling a Gazebo Transport service call: ros2 run ros_gz_sim create -world <world_name> -file <path/to/model.sdf> -name <robot_name> -x 0 -y 0 -z 0.1 for a file on disk (or a Fuel URL), or -topic <topic> to spawn from a latched std_msgs/msg/String publisher — the pattern for spawning a URDF that a robot_state_publisher node already published to /robot_description. See references/worlds-and-models.md.

Bridge sensor topics to ROS 2. Pass a single YAML file to parameter_bridge rather than one CLI arg per topic (see Key directives):

ros2 run ros_gz_bridge parameter_bridge \
  --ros-args -p config_file:=examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml

examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml bridges /clock, /cmd_vel, /odom, /tf, /scan, and /imu for the robot in examples/diffdrive-world-snippet.sdf — the gz-side topic names in that world and the gz_topic_names in the bridge config are kept in sync deliberately; renaming one without the other silently breaks the bridge for that topic. See references/ros2-bridge.md.

Add sensor noise. Every SDF sensor type accepts a <noise> element (type="gaussian", with <mean>/<stddev>, plus <bias_mean>/ <bias_stddev> for slowly-varying sensor bias) — for a lidar it sits inside <lidar> alongside <scan>/<range>, for IMU/camera it sits inside the relevant axis/noise block. A sensor with zero noise is a common source of a perception or localization stack that "works perfectly in sim" and then struggles on the real sensor's actual noise floor — pull real numbers from the target sensor's datasheet, per the sensor-rates-and-frames key directive above. See references/sensors.md.

Platform gotchas

• GPU vs. software rendering. Camera and gpu_lidar sensors go through Gazebo's render engine (OGRE2 by default); with a GPU and a display, this just works. Headless or GPU-less, use --headless-rendering (EGL-backed, OGRE2-only) rather than trying to get X11 forwarding working for a render-heavy sim — and if there's no GPU at all, OGRE2 falls back to software rendering, which works but is markedly slower for camera/lidar- heavy worlds. Source: gazebosim.org's Headless Rendering page, fetched directly this session. See references/sensors.md.
• Running gz in Docker. A ROS 2 + Gazebo + ros_gz stack in a container needs the same GPU-passthrough and headless-rendering considerations as any other GPU-using container workload — that setup (--gpus all, the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, choosing headless vs. a forwarded display) is the environments skill's territory, not duplicated here; see that skill's Docker and GPU/remote guidance, including its example ROS 2 Dockerfile, before building a gz-in-Docker image from scratch.
• macOS status. gz sim itself ships native Jetty binaries for macOS via Homebrew (brew install gz-jetty, Ventura/Sonoma — verified via direct fetch of gazebosim.org's macOS binary-install page this session), so Gazebo alone is not Docker-only the way ROS 2 is. But the ros_gz bridge links against ROS 2, and ROS 2 has no native macOS install (see the ros2 skill's Platform gotchas) — so the full ROS 2 + gz + bridge stack this skill assumes still needs Docker on a Mac dev machine, even though a gz-only world with no ROS integration could run natively there.

Customization

• Different gz release / ROS 2 distro pairing: swap the install command and the world/plugin filenames' implicit release assumptions (plugin filenames like gz-sim-diff-drive-system are stable across releases, but package names and binary availability are not) — re-check references/ros2-bridge.md's pairing table against the live ros_gz README first; don't assume the Jazzy/Harmonic pairing this skill defaults to still applies once the project moves to a different ROS 2 distro.
• Different robot / sensor set: start from examples/diffdrive-world-snippet.sdf, keep the DiffDrive plugin's <frame_id>/<child_frame_id> (odom/base_link) and the sensors' <topic> names in sync with whatever bridge config you copy alongside it — see references/worlds-and-models.md and references/sensors.md.
• Different bridge topic set: add or remove entries in examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml; each entry is independent, but a removed gz_topic_name must also be removed (or renamed together with) the SDF side that publishes it, per the Usage patterns note above.

References

• references/worlds-and-models.md — SDF world/model/link/joint anatomy, default world plugins, <include>/Fuel model references, the DiffDrive plugin's parameters, and spawning with ros_gz_sim's create executable.
• references/sensors.md — IMU, contact, lidar (<lidar>, the current preferred tag over the legacy <ray> alias), and camera sensor tags, the render-engine-backed Sensors system, and the shared <noise> element.
• references/ros2-bridge.md — parameter_bridge CLI syntax, the YAML config-file format (every field), the ROS↔gz message-type table, /clock bridging, and frame_id/override_frame_id overrides.
• examples/diffdrive-world-snippet.sdf — a minimal differential-drive robot world with lidar and IMU sensors (status: unverified — file header states the exact upstream sources and the deviations made).
• examples/ros-gz-bridge-config.yaml — the matching bridge config for the world above; topic names are kept in sync between the two files deliberately (status: unverified — file header states sourcing).
• Upstream: Gazebo documentation and Gazebo releases (both reached via direct fetch this session), gazebosim/ros_gz repo (bridge source and compatibility table, fetched directly this session), gazebosim/gz-sim (world examples and system-plugin sources), sdformat spec (sensor/noise element definitions). Sibling skills: ros2 (foundation, load alongside), nav2 (consumes this skill's bridged topics), simulation (simulator selection), isaac-sim (GPU photorealistic alternative), environments (Docker/GPU/remote setup), architect (routes here).

Changelog