The Empty World is an intentionally featureless simulation environment: a flat, 1 km² ground plane with no walls, terrain, or obstacles. The only object in the world is a single Clearpath Robotics base station model placed at coordinatesDocumentation Index
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(50, 50), which acts as a visual landmark without affecting navigation. This makes the Empty World the ideal blank slate for developing and testing custom Gazebo environments — simply add your own SDF or URDF models on top of the existing ground plane — or for any workflow that needs a clean physics sandbox without environmental interference.
Supported Platforms
All six Clearpath robot platforms are supported. Husky is the default if noplatform argument is provided and the CPR_GAZEBO_PLATFORM environment variable is not set.
| Platform | Default |
|---|---|
| Husky | ✓ |
| Jackal | |
| Warthog | |
| Boxer | |
| Dingo | |
| Ridgeback |
Launching
Launch with a specific platform
Use the
platform argument to select a robot. Accepted values are husky, jackal, warthog, boxer, dingo, and ridgeback:Launch with a custom spawn position
Set the robot’s initial position with
robot_x, robot_y, robot_z, and robot_yaw. Keep robot_z above ground level to prevent the robot from falling through the ground plane while the environment renders. The empty world launch file uses a default robot_z of 2.0:Features
1 km² flat ground plane — The ground surface covers a full square kilometre, providing ample room for long-distance navigation tests, multi-robot deployments, and custom object placement without approaching a boundary. No obstacles or terrain features by design — The absence of any environmental geometry means there is zero interference with sensor readings or path planning. Every obstacle a robot encounters in this world was placed there intentionally. Clearpath Robotics base station at(50, 50) — A single base station model is positioned near the centre of the world. It serves as a recognisable visual reference point and can be used as a waypoint or home-base target in navigation demos.
The base station model is a visual prop sourced from
cpr_accessories_gazebo. It does not publish any ROS topics of its own. For details on other Clearpath accessory models available for Gazebo, see the Accessories page.