WEBOTS: Open Mobile Robots Simulator

Mobile robot
group

http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/team/michel/webots Olivier Michel

No: 19

Room: INF-117

Developing controllers for autonomous mobile robots is a long process that requires heavy investments in software developments, hardware design and experimental setups. Moreover exchanges of setups, robots, controllers and ideas between researchers is made difficult due to the hardware nature of the components being investigated. WEBOTS is a simulation software intended to get rid of these constraints and hence to
explore new areas in autonomous mobile robotics.

WEBOTS makes it possible to design complex experiments in which several mobile robots run in virtual environments. Simulated robots are equipped with sensors and actuators which model the behavior of real devices. Hence, most of the developments of a mobile robotics project
can be done in simulation.

Main window: world editor and animation visualization

Features of the simulator:

Open system allowing any user to build and connect together virtual environments, to create and program virtual robots using a C compiler and the provided libraries.

Modular architecture ready to accept several robotics platforms (wheeled, legged robots, robot arms, etc.) with a plug and play system for customizing robots.

Library of sensors and actuators including infrared sensors, sonars, CCD linear and matrix, color and black & white cameras, DC motors, LEDs, etc.

Compatibility with the libraries of real robots, tested for the Khepera and Koala robots (the C source code of a real robot program can be compiled without any change to be run on the simulator).

3D visualization mode and camera modelling based upon OpenGL (possible hardware acceleration).

Export robotics experiments to VRML97 file format to be viewed as 3D animations on the Web.

Multi-agent simulations, where different types of robots may interact with each other (competition, cooperation).

Monitoring of real robots: view of the real sensor data and control of the actuators of the real robot connected via a serial link.

Standard file format for easy exchanges of experiment files between users, thus allowing mobile robotics benchmarks.

Available as a freeware for most of the UNIX/X11 systems, including Sun Solaris and Linux.

Robot window: an example of a panoramic camera plugged in a Khepera robot

Olivier Michel is an engineer from the University of Technology of Compiègne (France). He received his Ph-D in Computer Science from Nice University (France) in 1996 and is now a postdoc researcher at LAMI - EPFL. He is the author of Khepera Simulator, a simulation freeware for the Khepera robot. His research interests include Artificial Life, Artificial Neural Networks, Artificial Evolution, Machine Learning, Autonomous Robotics, Simulation of Autonomous Robots.

http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/team/michel
E-mail: Olivier.Michel@epfl.ch
Tel: ++41 21 693 52 64