Our friend Paul B has created a simulation model of the Razbot. You can take it for a test drive before you build one.

To run the simulation, install ROS, Gazebo and the Gazebo ROS packages on your Ubuntu system.

Clone the following repository into your catkin workspace and build the workspace

https://github.com/Waterfox/razbot_tutorials

There may be a few more dependencies to install. When finished, you can launch the simulation with:

roslaunch gazebo_razbot simulator.launch

To control the robot, run rosrun rqt_robot_steering rqt_robot_steering in a separate terminal. Set the output topic

to /razbot_diff_drive_controller/cmd_vel, and use the sliders to drive the robot. If you have a joystick, you can also use the teleop_twist_joy package. Just be sure to remap the cmd_vel topic to /razbot_diff_drive_controller/cmd_vel

The simulator software is actually ahead of the software being run on the Razbot itself. One of the next steps is to re-write a razbot control node to subscribe to cmd_vel and output the motor control topic that the MCU is listening for.

I'll add some detailed instructions into the manual on running the simulator the next time it is updated.