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http://answers.ros.org/question/28557/how-can-i-use-the-c-program-to-add-delete-object-in-ros-gazebo/

Check out the above question and following answers.

Or you could always just fork and give a command using system or one of the exec* functions.

something like

pid_t child = fork()
if (child == 0){
  system("rosrun gazebo spawn_model -file <path to xml/urdf file> -urdf -model <model_name>");
}

As to how to control the robot. Just publish to the topics the robot is listening to.

I've been using ros hydro and indigo to simulate and control a Turtlebot 2.0. What I do is launch the gazebo simulator and turtlebot urdf model using

roslaunch turtlebot_gazebo turtlebot_empty_world.launch

and then run my own programs I created with roscpp that issues commands through the cmd_vel_mux topic and listens to the various sensors.