Gazebo — The Complete Guide: Free Simulation of Robots, Sensors and Environments
Gazebo is the most widely used open robotics simulator in universities and industry. It runs a virtual robot in a 3D world with gravity, friction and contacts and simulates its sensors, so you can develop and test control and navigation code before any hardware exists.
Gazebo
Open Robotics
3D robotics simulator with physics and simulated sensors, integrated with ROS.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Physics engines — rigid-body dynamics, joints, friction and contacts.
- Simulated sensors — cameras, LiDAR, IMU, GPS and force sensors, with noise.
- Worlds and models — a ready model library and robot descriptions in SDF or URDF.
- ROS 2 bridge — the same code runs in simulation and on the real robot.
- Plugins — new controllers and sensors in C++.
New Gazebo and Gazebo Classic
The old version, Gazebo Classic, has reached end of life. New projects should start with current Gazebo (formerly called Ignition), which is released in named versions paired with ROS 2 releases.
Related tools
For the robot software — ROS 2. For a simulator with a friendly interface and a library of commercial robots — Webots. For fast contact simulation and reinforcement learning — MuJoCo.
ROS (Robot Operating System)
Open Robotics
The standard middleware for building robot software.
Get it from the vendor
Webots
Cyberbotics
Approachable robot simulator with a library of ready robots and environments, common in teaching.
Get it from the vendor
MuJoCo
Google DeepMind
A fast physics engine for robotics, biomechanics and machine learning.
Get it from the vendor
PyBullet
Bullet Physics
A physics engine for robotics and reinforcement learning, driven from Python.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Anyone working with ROS 2 needs a simulator, and Gazebo is the natural choice: free, open and backed by a huge community.