Stanford MSL (Carla) AV Stack

Overview

This repository provides the MSL's AV Stack that works with the Carla Simulator. The instructions below explain how to setup a Catkin workspace for ROS. At the moment, this stack is designed for the Carla MCity Event 1.

Carla Version / Carla ROS Version

For this challenge we use special MCity binaries provided by Univ. of Michigan. The binaries use Carla version 0.9.9.4 and have a special map designed for the challenges.

Setup the Catkin Workspace

Start by creating a new catkin workspace directory. Something like

source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
mkdir -p ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges/src
cd ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges

We need to clone our repositories to the src directory

cd ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges/src
git clone git@github.com:StanfordMSL/carla_circle.git -b update_planners
git clone https://github.com/carla-simulator/ros-bridge.git
cd ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges/src/ros-bridge
git reset --hard 1096747a6e84bf01ea1a859b9a0f6d01e0304ef6
git submodule update --init
cd ../
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r

Then we need to compile our Catkin workspace.

The first time you run this you do not need to run the command catkin clean --yes. If you do run the command, you will get an error, but this can be ignored.

cd ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges
catkin clean --yes
catkin build carla_ackermann_control carla_circle carla_ego_vehicle carla_infrastructure carla_manual_control carla_msgs carla_ros_bridge carla_waypoint_publisher
catkin build rqt_carla_control

Running the AV Client

Note: We assume an instance of Carla is running and available on the localhost. By default, running ./CarlaUE4.sh from the Carla simulator directory should be sufficient. However, if running on Michigan's server, you should follow the instructions found here.

We should now be able to run the AV client on the server. In a terminal enter the following:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/opt/Carla/MCity/PythonAPI/carla/dist/carla-0.9.9-py2.7-linux-x86_64.egg
source ~/Catkin_Workspace/tri-carla-challenges/devel/setup.bash
roslaunch carla_circle mcity_event1.launch host:=localhost port:=2000 max_speed:=5.0 opp_vel:=5.0 plan_steps:=10 plan_horizon:=3.0

Notes on the MCity specific challenge

Michigan is hosting the challenge on a server they run. The server ip is 141.211.37.251. To log in, we need to use the username stanford. As mentioned above, you should check out their documentation to better understand the process. As a quick refresher, you should have a terminal in which you can explicitly run the command ssh stanford@141.211.37.251 -L 2000:localhost:2000 -L 2001:localhost:2001 -L 2002:localhost:2002. This will forward the 2000-2002 ports of your local machine to Michigan's server where the Carla simulation is running. Before running on the Michigan server, you should add a timeslot to the calendar You may also want to monitor the simulation by viewing the stream at https://www.twitch.tv/cmpute.

Important Links

• Calendar - https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/1?cid=Y18xMGMxNjcybmFmNXFzNG1jZnFmMWRrdjBmc0Bncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t
• Challenge documentation - https://yyab.github.io/mcityCarlaChallenge.io/
• Carla server stream - https://www.twitch.tv/cmpute

You most likely need to request access to the calendar by emailing Xinpeng at xinpengw at umich.edu