Two approaches to mobile robots simulator design

This paper presents the design of a mobile robots simulator which is applicable for robot soccer or for general use. The simulator consists of a group of mobile robots, the ball and includes knowledge of their dynamic behavior modeling, collisions modeling and visualization. Two different approaches to the design of this simulator are given and compared. By the first approach the simulator physics background was completely developed by our team, which enabled us to get a better insight into the problem domain and gave us the possibility to efficiently solve some simulator specifics. First the model of ball and robot motion was derived and then complex approximate collisions models, where the real robot shape is taken into consideration. Some new ideas of collision formulation, realization and real robot shape inclusion are used. By the second approach the simulator was developed using freely available physics engine ODE ? Open Dynamics Engine. This engine already includes physical background for rigid bodies dynamic ; it is up to the user to define mechanical and physical parameters of the objects to simulate e.g. dimensions, masses, friction, joints and the like. The implementation of both simulators are described and a comparisons of their reality description, computational efficiency, effort and knowledge needed to built the simulator, advantages and disadvantages are given.