Search & Rescue

Search & Rescue (SAR) robotics project at the Center of Automation and Robotics (CAR), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. A Husarion ROSbot XL — or our custom SAR platform sharing the same kinematics — explores an indoor environment autonomously: SLAM builds the map, frontier-based exploration drives the robot, Nav2 handles navigation, and an ArUco detector flags markers placed in the scene.

ROS 2 Humble. Tested on macOS (Apple Silicon) via Pixi and on Ubuntu 22.04. Simulation uses Gazebo (gz-sim) through ros_gz.

Workspace

Packages live at the repo root (not under src/).

Package	Purpose
sar_bringup	Top-level launches that compose sim/real stacks
sar_control	ros2_control hardware interface (Arduino over USB serial)
sar_description	URDF/xacro for real + sim, single launch
sar_exploration	Frontier exploration (SLAM + Nav2 + explore_lite)
sar_gazebo	Gazebo worlds, models, and the sim launch
sar_mission	Mission state machine (pause exploration on marker)
sar_msgs	Custom ROS messages
sar_perception	ArUco detector + optional RealSense driver
sar_slam	slam_toolbox async wrapper
sar_utils	Joystick / keyboard teleop

External dependencies are pulled in as git submodules: rosbot_ros, husarion_components_description, husarion_controllers, husarion_gz_worlds, m-explore-ros2, rplidar_ros.

Setup

Always clone with submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/alvgaona/sar.git
# or, if already cloned:
git submodule update --init --recursive

Pixi (macOS / Linux)

Self-contained conda env using the robostack-humble channel; no system ROS install needed.

pixi install                          # provision the env (one-time)
pixi shell                            # enter the env (sources install/setup.sh)
pixi run build                        # build everything
pixi run build-pkg sar_gazebo         # build a single package and its deps
pixi run clean                        # wipe build/install/log

Ubuntu 22.04 (native ROS Humble)

Install ROS 2 Humble first, then:

sudo ./scripts/install-deps.sh
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

Docker (any host)

Brings up a desktop-VNC ROS Humble container (alvgaona/ros:humble-desktop-vnc) mounting the workspace at /root/sar_ws. VNC is on localhost:5901.

docker compose up -d
docker compose exec sar bash

# inside the container, on first use:
./scripts/install-deps.sh
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.sh

Run

Composed stacks via sar_bringup:

ros2 launch sar_bringup sim.launch.py     # Gazebo + SLAM + exploration + perception
ros2 launch sar_bringup real.launch.py    # sar_control + SLAM + exploration + perception

Or piece-by-piece (each package's README has more):

ros2 launch sar_gazebo gazebo.launch.py                       # sim only
ros2 launch sar_slam slam.launch.py use_sim_time:=true
ros2 launch sar_exploration explore.launch.py use_sim_time:=true
ros2 launch sar_perception perception.launch.py
ros2 launch sar_control control.launch.py [mock:=true]        # real robot

License

Apache 2.0