SOAR in gazebo and raw lidar data

[zeeshanns]

Hello, and thank you for the great work on the SOAR stack!

I’m currently working on integrating the SOAR stack (https://github.com/SYSU-STAR/SOAR) with a Gazebo simulation environment where I have a robot equipped with an Ouster LiDAR sensor (OS1-series).

My goal is to run SOAR in this simulated setup, where:

The robot navigates a Gazebo world.
The Ouster LiDAR data is simulated and published as sensor_msgs/PointCloud2.

I would like to know:
How can I integrate SOAR with Gazebo-based simulations? Are there any specific interfaces or ROS topics that SOAR expects for map and robot state input?
How should I process the Ouster LiDAR data to be compatible with SOAR?
Are there any launch files or example configurations available for running SOAR in a simulated Gazebo world, possibly with LiDAR or SLAM integration?

Is there a preferred way to connect the robot’s odometry and raw point cloud data to SOAR? 

Thanks again for your support!

[Zager-Zhang]

The previous launch configuration tightly coupled the Marsim simulation with our algorithm, making it inconvenient to switch to other simulators or real-world deployments.

The recently added use_sim parameter in the launch file is a significant improvement, providing a clear way to disable Marsim and enabling easier use of alternative simulations or real-world deployments. But the following might also require attention:

1. ROS Topic Alignment: Ensure odometry and sensor topics are correctly remapped to match the outputs of other simulators (like Gazebo) or real hardware when use_sim is false.
2. Multi-Robot Initial Positions: Pay attention to and potentially adjust the initial positions of multiple robots when switching between simulation and real-world setups.

You can check the latest repository, I've already updated it. @zeeshanns