A simulation environment for OpenRTM-aist

2010

Abst rac t-Open source software simulators play a major role in robotics design and research as platforms for developing, testing and improving architectures, concepts and algorithms for cooperative/multi-robot systems. Simulation environment enables control systems to be developed rapidly and transferred to the real system with minimal change in behaviour. A number of simulators boost of effective data flow between sensors, processors and actuators of a robot/ team through a communication channel. The drive to build an adaptable and capable robotic development environment has led to the emergence of numerous open source application programs. This article discusses freely available open source simulators and their impact in multi mobile robot system research projects. Firstly, the architectures of the different simulation software are discussed. Secondly, their capabilities are discussed with regards to their architectures. Thirdly, multi-robot cooperation theory is presented. Lastly, an example of algorithm development for multi-robot cooperation using one of the discussed simulation platforms is presented.

2011

Abstract This paper presents MORSE, a new open-source robotics simulator.

This paper presents USARSim, an open source high fidelity robot simulator that can be used both for research and education. USARSim offers many characteristics that differentiates it from most existing simulators. Most notably, it constitutes the simulation engine used to run the Virtual Robots Competition within the Robocup initiative. We describe its general architecture, describe examples of utilization, and provide a comprehensive overview for those interested in robot simulations for education, research and competitions.

2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2008

Intense efforts to define a common structure in robotic applications, both from a conceptual and from an implementation point of view, have been carried out in the last years and several frameworks have been realized for helping in developing robotic applications. However, due to the diversity of these applications, as well as of the research groups involved, a common framework is still far from being accepted.

2013 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2013

Abstract² From exploring planets to cleaning homes, the reach and versatility of robotics is vast. The integration of actuation, sensing and control makes robotics systems powerful, but complicates their simulation. This paper introduces a versatile, scalable, yet powerful general-purpose robot simulation framework called V-REP.

Many times the simulation environment is an ad hoc implementation done with the single purpose of testing the author's algorithm or method-ology. It is not difficult to find that the accuracy of the simulation is low and mostly unable to reflect the real world. While, under certain circumstances, that can be a valid approach there is the need of a simulation environment where the focus is on the physical realism while retaining a lot of configurability so that it can be adapted to a lot of different uses. In this paper it is presented a simulation environment where multiple kinds of robots can be modeled. The robots can be modeled based on a network of physical bodies interconnected by joints that can be powered, or not, by electrical motors. The corresponding low level controllers and the high level decision or IA can also be implemented in the simulation environment. To achieve that, some established open source libraries like the Open Dynamics Engine are used. The parameters ...

IFAC Proceedings Volumes, 1995

System development of modem CIM structures involves integration of different robot systems. This integration can be very difficult and time consuming. The major problems involved in integrating new and existing robotics software applications result from differences in their hardware and software system. programming languages and differences in the applications themselves The purpose of the paper is to develop a design methodology for robot software that overcomes these problems. A multi-level software architecture is proposed. with well-defined functions at each level and a high degree of abstractization, thus allowing an almost complete transparency over specific hardware and software particularities

2008

2006

is an open source package that provides a high-resolution, physics based simulation of robotic platforms. The package provides models of several common robotic platforms and sensors as well as sample worlds and a socket interface into a commonly used commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation package. Initially introduced to support the development of search and rescue robots, USARSim has proved to be a tool with a broader scope, from robot education to human robot interfaces, including cooperation, and more. During Robocup 2006, a new competition based on USARSim will be held in the context of the urban search and rescue competitions.

2012

Developing reliable robotics applications is a difficult and resource-consuming task. The scientific community is undertaking several initiatives to devise standard design techniques, and the deployment of reusable and interoperable components. At this point in time, a variety of approaches for robotic software development have been proposed, due to the wide range of domains where robots are used, the many forms and functions that a robot can have, and the diversity of people involved in robotics. Specifically, we focus on modularity and rapid development of distributed robotic systems. First, we survey the main issues in developing software frameworks for robotics, and we briefly discuss existent approaches, highlighting their goals, advantages and weaknesses. Then, we address the most significant design choices that arise in the implementation of robotic software and motivate the specific approach taken in OpenRDK, a software framework developed in our laboratory. Finally, we describe h...

MELECON 2006 - 2006 IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference, 2006

Software development for large robotic projects involves many different researchers with different programming needs, levels of mastery, and areas of research. Integrating such heterogeneous software while maintaining requirements like realtime, dependability, intensive access to hardware, etc., is a challenge in any long-term effort of this kind. A step forward along that way is the BABEL development system that supports heterogeneous programming languages (C, C++, JAVA), communication middleware (CORBA, TCP/IP connections), and platforms (RT-operating systems, MS-Windows). This paper focuses on the core of BABEL: the Aracne specification that covers the design phase of the robotic application lifecycle.

2015

Effective system integration requires strict adherence to strong software engineering standards, a practice not much favoured in many collaborative research projects. We argue that component-based software engineering (CBSE) provides a way to overcome this problem because it provides flexibility for developers while requiring the adoption of only a modest number of software engineering practices. This focus on integration complements software re-use, the more usual motivation for adopting CBSE. We illustrate our argument by showing how a large-scale system architecture for an application in the domain of robot-enhanced therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been implemented. We highlight the manner in which the integration process is facilitated by the architecture implementation of a set of placeholder components that comprise stubs for all functional primitives, as well as the complete implementation of all inter-component communications. We focus on the component-port-connector meta-model and show that the YARP robot platform is a well-matched middleware framework for the implementation of this model. To facilitate the validation of port-connector communication, we configure the initial placeholder implementation of the system architecture as a discrete event simulation and control the invocation of each component's stub primitives probabilistically. This allows the system integrator to adjust the rate of inter-component communication while respecting its asynchronous and concurrent character. Also, individual ports and connectors can be periodically selected as the simulator cycles through each primitive in each subsystem component. This ability to control the rate of connector communication considerably eases the task of validating component-port-connector behaviour in a large system. Ultimately, over and above its well-accepted benefits for software re-use in robotics, CBSE strikes a good balance between software engineering best practice and the socio-technical problem of managing effective integration in collaborative robotics research projects.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2015

This paper proposes a generic framework for test driven development of robotic systems. The framework provides functionalities for developing and running unit tests in a language and middleware independent manner. Tests are developed as independent plug-ins to be loaded and executed by an automated tool. Moreover, a fixture manager prepares the setup (e.g., running robot drivers or simulator) and actively monitors that all the required resources are available before and during the execution of the tests. These functionalities effectively accelerate the development process and cover different levels of robotic system testing. The paper describes the framework and provides realistic examples to show how it has been used to support software development on our robotic platform.

2018

Nowadays robotic systems are a combination of complex software and hardware components providing sophisticated functionalities. Robotic control systems evolving in an uncertain environment are generally developed case by case for specific deployment platforms. For complex and realistic systems, simulation plays a central role during design by providing testing facilities. In this paper, we propose to model robotic architectures using the modeldriven framework AMSA. In order to facilitate simulation and testing, we propose to incorporate different behaviors in the model through parameterizations. For testing purpose, we define scenarios as a sequence of parameter modifications. From architectural and scenario models, code is generated for the robotic middleware ROS. During simulation, scenarios are used to evaluate different controller behaviors for different contexts. The approach has been experimented for the MDE challenge: a rover must follow another leader rover. The approach all...

2004

Developing software for controlling robotic systems is costly due to the complexity inherent in these systems. There is a need for tools that permit a reduction in the programming efforts, aiming at the generation of modular and robust applications, and promoting software reuse. The techniques which are of common use today in other areas are not adequate to deal with the complexity associated with these systems. In this work we present CoolBOT, a component oriented framework for programming robotic systems, based on the Port Automata model that fosters controllability and observability of software components. A simple demonstrator outlines the bene ts of using the proposed approach in the development of a robotic application.