Abstract
In this paper, the characteristics and performance of three open-source simulators for robotics, V-REP, Gazebo and ARGoS, are thoroughly analysed and compared. While they all allow for programming in C++, they also represent clear alternatives when it comes to the trade-off between complexity and performance. Attention is given to their built-in features, robot libraries, programming methods and the usability of their user interfaces. Benchmark test results are reported in order to identify how well the simulators can cope with environments of varying complexity. The richness of features of V-REP and the strong performance of Gazebo and ARGoS in complex scenes are highlighted. Various usability issues of Gazebo are also noted.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by EPSRC Programme Grant “Robotics for Nuclear Environments”, grant ref: EP/P01366X/1. We would like to thank Farshad Arvin, Tareq Assaf, Giovanni Beltrame, Paul Bremner, Ales Leonardis, Carlo Pinciroli, Chie Takahashi, Simon Watson and Craig West for sharing their opinions and insights into various aspects of simulation work. We would also like to thank Xavier Poteau, who created the sample industrial building CAD model.
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Pitonakova, L., Giuliani, M., Pipe, A., Winfield, A. (2018). Feature and Performance Comparison of the V-REP, Gazebo and ARGoS Robot Simulators. In: Giuliani, M., Assaf, T., Giannaccini, M. (eds) Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems. TAROS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10965. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96728-8_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96728-8_30
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