When trying to use the care-o-bot in simulation I came across some problems. The tutorials seem to be outdated, as neither the 'cobbringup' package nor the 'cobbringupsim' package from the 'cobrobots' and 'cobsimulation' stacks are there when installed from .debs. These are referred to in the tutorials on bringing up the robot in simulation, however (for example here: http://www.care-o-bot-research.org/software/tutorials/move-the-robot-in-simulation). The launch files for 'cobdashboard' and 'cob_teleop' referred to in the tutorial are also not available (anymore?).

I'm using Natty 64bit with ros electric and installed from .debs as described in the ROS and care-o-bot installation guides.

I managed to start a care-o-bot in simulation like so:

Start gazebo in one terminal:

roslaunch gazebo_worlds empty_world.launch

Set environment and spawn care-o-bot in another terminal:

export ROBOT=cob3-1 
export ROBOT_ENV=ipa-kitchen
roslaunch cob_gazebo robot.launch

This succesfully spawns the robot in simulation and I can for example visualize point cloud data. However, manually running 'knoeppkes.py' from 'cobdashboard' seems to hang on startup and 'cobteleopkeyboard' successfully publishes on 'cmdvel', but the robot does not appear to use this topic.

Any help is appreciated.