Rapid Development of a Mobile Robot Simulation Environment
(Room Innovation Hub-- Booth 2727)
03 May 16
10:00 AM
-
5:30 PM
Tracks:
Academic, Ground, Research and Development
During the 2015 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, the Lawrence Technological University team had a problem. We were working with a new platform, and our hardware team wouldn't be able to complete it until a short amount of time before the competition, which meant the software team was stuck waiting on them before they could start testing navigation code. This meant that simulation was our only option to have a chance to finish writing the code in time. Unfortunately, we found that no simulation environment met our needs. There were some that were free, but required a different operating system or didn't have the output we needed. The paid options didn't meet the team's needs or didn't fit the budget. This led to the development of our own simulation environment. The paper reports on the creation of the robotics simulation environment using the Unity game engine and includes technical details of the communication method used and the design of the software. The presentation will focus on the development process, the inspiration for the project, and the successes and challenges of the approach. The simulation environment created was vital in the team’s second-place award in the IOP competition and completion of the basic course. Improvements made for the 2016 IGVC competition will also be featured. These improvements may vary based on the needs of the team and the new sensors and actuators utilized for that year. This work was done under the supervision of Dr. Chan-Jin Chung and with the assistance of three other team members, Fan Wei, Jimmy Tanamati Soares, and Icaro Gargione, who unfortunately will not be able to assist in presenting the session.