Mastering ROS for Robotics Programming - Second Edition

Understanding the Gazebo plugins

Gazebo plugins help us to control the robot models, sensors, world properties, and even the way Gazebo runs. Like pluginlib and nodelets, Gazebo plugins are a set of C++ code, which can be dynamically loaded/unloaded from the Gazebo simulator.

Using plugins, we can access all the components of Gazebo, and also it is independent of ROS, so that it can share with people who are not using ROS.  We can mainly classify the plugins as follows:

• The world plugin: Using the world plugin, we can control the properties of a specific world in Gazebo. We can change the physics engine, the lighting, and other world properties using this plugin.
• The model plugin: The model plugin is attached to a specific model in Gazebo ...