Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform – A Versatile Small Footprint Robot Simulator

Abstract

This paper presents a small footprint and modular virtual robot experimentation platform capable of easily being integrated into bigger applications. It comes as a library of functions and can be used through a native client application, a script or through an integrated GUI. The platform is organized around calculation modules where each achieves a specific task, namely collision detection, distance calculation, powerful proximity sensor simulation, forward and inverse kinematics, as well as path planning. Additional modules can easily be added and complicated simulations realized by programmatically combining them in a client application. The platform's small size allowed it to be successfully tested and embedded into several applications, as well as to speed-up the design process of a sonar-based navigation and obstacle avoidance algorithm.