Quickstart guide
In this tutorial, you will find information that will help you get started on using the Asimovo RoboDevOps Platform.
Last updated
In this tutorial, you will find information that will help you get started on using the Asimovo RoboDevOps Platform.
Last updated
You can get started by navigating to the page asimovo.com. Once there, click on the Login field at the top bar.
This will take you to the login page of Asimovo, where you can enter your login credentials:
After logging in, you arrive at the Home page of the platform where you can overview your projects, see your subscription and simulation credit usage.
If this is your first time logging in, you won't have any personal projects yet. However, you can already see and try all of the available public projects. Moreover, you can create personal projects by copying the available public projects. While you would be able to run simulations in a public project you have no specific Team role in, copying it into a personal project enables you to also modify and save the assets that belong to the project.
The next steps in this guide will walk you through the process of copying a public project to create your own personal one, setting up a workspace and running simulations with the available assets, and saving any modifications and simulation outputs you created back into your project.
To create a personal copy from the default-single-drone public project, navigate to the tile with this title, open its drop-down menu by clicking on the ⋮symbol on its top-right, and click on Copy.
After the copy process is finished, you should see a new project in the list, called default-robot-arm Copy. You can rename this project and edit its description by clicking on the option Edit in the drop-down menu of its tile.
Afterwards, click on the arrow icon on the bottom-right of the tile of this project. This will take you to its overview page. On this overview page you can see the storage and credits belonging to the project, the assets that are used as well as the project owner and team members.
After opening the project, you can see that it currently has 0 simulation credits assigned to it. To resolve this, you need to transfer credits to this project from your personal simulation credits pool. Navigate back to the home page of the platform. Here, click on the "Transfer credits" option located on the upper part of the page.
This will open a panel where you can specify the details of the transfer. Select Project for Type, the default-single-drone Copy for the Project (if you have renamed your project then select the appropriate one), and enter the amount of credits to be transferred. For the purposes of this quickstart guide, lets transfer 200 credits.
Afterwards, navigate back to the project. You can see that the amount of simulation credits available has increased to 200.
Click on the Assets Library menu on the left to overview the Robot, Environment and Component assets that belong to the project. You can see that at the moment one of each type belongs to this project.
Click on Demo this project button below the project name to launch the demo of the project
select the project account that shows the balance credit and click on proceed
wait for the websocket to get connected,look in the problems tab for status in foxglove.
After the page loads click on Tools->Start Simulation
wait for the project to load, after the project has loaded. click on the terminal with Teleop-twist- keyboard and the drone can be controlled. Foxglove window will show the screen
To try out the project, you need to create a Workspace. Click on the My Workspaces menu on the left, and once on the My Workspaces page, click on Create Workspace on the top right. From the dropdown menu select From Scratch.
This will open a panel where you can configure your workspace. Add my-first-workspace for the Name, and select ROS2 Humble | Gazebo Fortress | Developmentfor the Platform configuration. For the Hardware select Heavy. Add This is my first workspace to the Description field, and leave the Run in background option unchecked. Then click on Continue.
On the next screen you can select the assets you would like to use in the simulation. Select X3 UAV Config 3, Fortress Island and Package to move the X3 UAV drone and get ROS2 sensor messages, then click on Generate Launchfile. This generates a launchfile which will be used later in the running Workspace, for the Start button.
On the next screen you are able to review the created launchfile. Once done, click on Save & Start Simulation. This starts up a container for your use.
When the workspace has started up click on the Start button in the top menu bar. After everything has loaded you can navigate the drone within the world with the following command:
In case Foxglove does not show the camera images by default, you can set them by adding two new panels with the type Image and setting their topic to /X3/camera_down/image and /X3/camera_front/image.
In case the Gazebo viewer does not load and the world remains grey, refresh the Gazebo panel with the refresh icon on its top right.
Due to the size of the environment, it may take some time for the simulation to start up after clicking on the Start button. However, if the simulations still hasn't fully started up after a few minutes, there might be some problems with the launchfile connected to the Start button. In this case, you can follow the instructions here to launch everything for the simulation.
The Start button mentioned above uses the /home/asimovo/launch/assets.launch launchfile to launch every asset in the simulation. This is an auto-generated file, which assumes the names of the launchfiles of the assets based on the names of the assets themselves. If you have your own assets you would like to launch using this Start button feel free to modify this file to fit your own needs. Every data that is in the home folder of the user will be preserved even after the workspace has closed, and will be accessible when the workspace is opened again.
If you have finished with the simulations, you can stop the running container by clicking on End in the top right. This ends the workspace and stop its simulation credit usage.
The next tutorial will give you the definitions of some important expressions that can be found on the Asimovo Platform.
