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The Agriculture World is a large, flat outdoor Gazebo simulation environment designed for agricultural robotics research. It features a barn with surrounding fences, a medium-sized solar farm, and a wide open field — making it an ideal testbed for area-coverage algorithms, precision navigation, and autonomous field operations. The flat terrain gives ground-truth mobility to wheeled platforms without the complexity of elevation changes, while the structural landmarks provide natural reference points for localization and mission planning.

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Supported Platforms

The Agriculture World supports the following Clearpath robot platforms. The default platform is Husky.
Platformplatform Value
Huskyhusky (default)
Jackaljackal
Warthogwarthog
The platform argument defaults to the CPR_GAZEBO_PLATFORM environment variable if set, otherwise husky is used.

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Launching

1

Launch with the default platform (Husky)

Start the Agriculture World simulation with a Husky robot spawned at the default position:
roslaunch cpr_agriculture_gazebo agriculture_world.launch
2

Launch with a different platform

Use the platform argument to spawn a Jackal or Warthog instead:
roslaunch cpr_agriculture_gazebo agriculture_world.launch platform:=jackal

roslaunch cpr_agriculture_gazebo agriculture_world.launch platform:=warthog
3

Launch with a custom spawn position

Override the robot’s initial position and heading using the robot_x, robot_y, robot_z, and robot_yaw arguments:
roslaunch cpr_agriculture_gazebo agriculture_world.launch \
  robot_x:=10.0 \
  robot_y:=5.0 \
  robot_z:=0.2 \
  robot_yaw:=1.5707963267948966
Always set robot_z to a value above ground level (e.g. 0.2). If the robot spawns below the ground plane before the world geometry has fully rendered, it may fall through the terrain.

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View Without Spawning a Robot

To inspect the world in RViz without spawning any robot, use the view_world launch file: 
roslaunch cpr_agriculture_gazebo view_world.launch
This opens the agriculture world geometry in RViz using a robot state publisher, which is useful for reviewing the environment layout before committing to a robot configuration.

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Features

The Agriculture World includes the following environment elements:
  • Barn — A full-scale barn model surrounded by fencing, providing a realistic rural landmark for navigation and localization tests.
  • Large open field — A wide, flat area free of obstacles, ideal for developing and evaluating area-coverage path planners.
  • Solar farm — A medium-sized array of solar panels that adds structured geometry to the environment for detection and inspection tasks.

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GPS / Real-World Coordinates

The Agriculture World supports real-world GPS coordinates via a datum script. Sourcing datum.bash exports the GAZEBO_WORLD_LAT and GAZEBO_WORLD_LON environment variables, which set the GPS origin (datum point) for the simulation. This is used by the robot_localization package and other ROS navigation tools to convert between ENU (East-North-Up) local coordinates and global latitude/longitude. The Agriculture World datum is located near Carman, Manitoba, Canada:
VariableValue
GAZEBO_WORLD_LAT50.109461
GAZEBO_WORLD_LON-97.318978
Source the datum before launching any ROS nodes that depend on GPS coordinates: 
source $(rospack find cpr_agriculture_gazebo)/scripts/datum.bash
This world uses an ENU-aligned coordinate frame. The positive X axis points East, positive Y points North, and positive Z points Up, consistent with the REP-103 convention used by robot_localization and navsat_transform_node.

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Launch File Arguments

The following arguments are accepted by agriculture_world.launch. Most have sensible defaults and only need to be overridden for non-standard configurations.
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platform
string
default:"husky"
The robot platform to spawn. Supported values: husky, jackal, warthog. Falls back to the CPR_GAZEBO_PLATFORM environment variable if set.
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robot_x
float
default:"0.0"
Robot spawn position along the X axis (metres).
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robot_y
float
default:"0.0"
Robot spawn position along the Y axis (metres).
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robot_z
float
default:"0.2"
Robot spawn height above the ground plane (metres). Keep above 0.0 to avoid falling through unrendered terrain.
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robot_yaw
float
default:"0.0"
Robot spawn heading in radians. 0.0 faces East; 1.5707963267948966 (π/2) faces North.
​
world_x
float
default:"0.0"
World geometry spawn offset along X (metres).
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world_y
float
default:"0.0"
World geometry spawn offset along Y (metres).
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world_z
float
default:"0.0"
World geometry spawn offset along Z (metres).
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world_yaw
float
default:"0.0"
World geometry spawn rotation in radians.
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gui
bool
default:"true"
Set to false to launch Gazebo in headless mode (no graphical window).
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headless
bool
default:"false"
Set to true to run the Gazebo server without the client GUI.
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use_sim_time
bool
default:"true"
Use Gazebo’s simulated clock for ROS time. Should remain true in most simulation scenarios.
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world_name
string
default:"actually_empty_world.world"
Path to the Gazebo .world file used as the base environment. The agriculture world geometry is loaded as a separate URDF model on top of this base world.

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