Abstract
In this paper we present a novel simulation environment called SwarmSimX with the ability to simulate dozens of robots in a realistic 3D environment. The software architecture of SwarmSimX allows new robots, sensors, and other libraries to be loaded at runtime, extending the functionality of the simulation environment significantly. In addition, SwarmSimX allows an easy exchange of the underlying libraries used for the visual and physical simulation to incorporate different libraries (e.g., improved or future versions). A major feature is also the possibility to perform the whole simulation in real-time allowing for human-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop scenarios. SwarmSimX has been already employed in several works presenting haptic shared control of multiple mobile robots (e.g., quadrotor UAVs). Additionally, we present here two validation tests showing the physical fidelity and the real-time performance of SwarmSimX. For the tests we used NVIDIA® PhysX® and Ogre3D as physics and rendering libraries, respectively.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Pinciroli, C., Trianni, V., O’Grady, R., Pini, G., Brutschy, A., Brambilla, M., Mathews, N., Ferrante, E., Di Caro, G., Ducatelle, F., Stirling, T., Gutierrez, A., Gambardella, L.M., Dorigo, M.: ARGoS: A modular, multi-engine simulator for heterogeneous swarm robotics. In: 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 5027–5034 (September 2011)
Craighead, J., Murphy, R., Burke, J., Goldiez, B.: A survey of commercial & open source unmanned vehicle simulators. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Robotics and Automation Conf., pp. 852–857 (April 2007)
Alex, A.L., Brunyé, T., Sidman, J., Weil, S.A.: From gaming to training: A review of studies on fidelity, immersion, presence, and buy-in and their effects on transfer in PC-based simulations and games (November 2005)
Boeing, A., Bräunl, T.: Evaluation of real-time physics simulation systems. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Australia and Southeast Asia, GRAPHITE 2007, pp. 281–288. ACM, New York (2007)
Diankov, R.: Automated Construction of Robotic Manipulation Programs. PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute (August 2010)
Echeverria, G., Lassabe, N., Degroote, A., Lemaignan, S.: Modular openrobots simulation engine: Morse. In: Proceedings of the IEEE ICRA (2011)
Blender Foundation: Blender, http://www.blender.org/ (accessed August 2012)
Freese, M., Singh, S., Ozaki, F., Matsuhira, N.: Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform V-REP: A Versatile 3D Robot Simulator. In: Ando, N., Balakirsky, S., Hemker, T., Reggiani, M., von Stryk, O. (eds.) SIMPAR 2010. LNCS, vol. 6472, pp. 51–62. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Michel, O.: Cyberbotics Ltd. Webots TM: Professional Mobile Robot Simulation. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems 1, 39–42 (2004)
Koenig, N., Howard, A.: Design and use paradigms for gazebo, an open-source multi-robot simulator. In: 2004 IEEE RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS IEEE Cat No04CH37566, vol. 3, pp. 2149–2154 (2004)
NVIDIA®: PhysX®, http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/physx (accessed May 2012)
Boost: boost C++ libraries, http://www.boost.org/ (accessed May 2012)
Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., Vlissides, J.: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, 1st edn. Addison-Wesley Professional (November 1994)
Biggs, G., Makarenko, A., Brooks, A., Kaupp, T., Moser, M.: Gearbox: Truly reusable robot software (poster). In: Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Nice, France (September 2008)
ROS.org community: ROS Wiki, http://www.ros.org (accessed May 2012)
Franchi, A., Secchi, C., Son, H.I., Bülthoff, H.H., Robuffo Giordano, P.: Bilateral teleoperation of groups of mobile robots with time-varying topology. Accepted to IEEE Trans. on Robotics (2012)
Franchi, A., Secchi, C., Ryll, M., Bülthoff, H.H., Robuffo Giordano, P.: Bilateral shared control of multiple quadrotors: Balancing autonomy and human assistance with a group of UAVs. Conditionally Accepted to IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (2012)
Robuffo Giordano, P., Franchi, A., Secchi, C., Bülthoff, H.H.: Passivity-based decentralized connectivity maintenance in the bilateral teleoperation of multiple UAVs. In: 2011 Robotics: Science and Systems, Los Angeles, CA (June 2011)
Canonical Ltd.: Ubuntu, http://www.ubuntu.com (accessed October 2012)
Torus Knot Software Ltd.: Ogre3D, http://www.ogre3d.org/ (accessed May 2012)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lächele, J., Franchi, A., Bülthoff, H.H., Robuffo Giordano, P. (2012). SwarmSimX: Real-Time Simulation Environment for Multi-robot Systems. In: Noda, I., Ando, N., Brugali, D., Kuffner, J.J. (eds) Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots. SIMPAR 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7628. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34327-8_34
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34327-8_34
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34326-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34327-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)