Abstract—With a growth of a main stream simulation tools variety and virtual experiments popularity in a role of a first R&D stage in robotics, researchers faced a need to model their own robotic platforms. Edge cutting simulators for mobile robots, e.g., Gazebo, Webots and CoppeliaSim, contain a limited number of well documented robot models, which were constructed by robots’ manufacturers or associated research groups. Yet, to create a new model of a complex robot is not an easy task for a beginner. This tutorial paper describes a step-by-step process of creating of a new robot model in the Gazebo simulator. The process starts from the model construction and physics setup, and ends up with sensors, Robot Operating System (ROS) based control integration and creating a ROS-project with the model. The process is illustrated with an example of a crawler-type robot Servosila Engineer. The example is supplied with an open source code of the ROS-packages that are via a public Gitlab repository.

Keywords—modelling, simulation, Gazebo, ROS, tutorial

Cite: Alexandra Dobrokvashina, Roman Lavrenov, Evgeni Magid, Yang Bai, and Mikhail Svinin, "How to Create a New Model of a Mobile Robot in ROS/Gazebo Environment: An Extended Tutorial," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 192-199, July 2023. 

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