Abstract: Cyberbotics Ltd. develops WebotsTM, a mobile robotics simulation software that provides you with a rapid prototyping environment for modelling, programming and simulating mobile robots. The provided robot libraries enable you to transfer your control programs to several commercially available real mobile robots. WebotsTM lets you define and modify a complete mobile robotics setup, even several different robots sharing the same environment. For each object, you can define a number of properties, such as shape, color, texture, mass, friction, etc. You can equip each robot with a large number of available sensors and actuators. You can program these robots using your favorite development environment, simulate them and optionally transfer the resulting programs onto your real robots. WebotsTM has been developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, thoroughly tested, well documented and continuously maintained for over 7 years. It is now the main commercial product available from Cyberbotics Ltd.
Keywords: WebotsTM, mobile robot simulation, rapid prototyping, transfer to real robots, commercial software
1. Introduction
Cyberbotics Ltd. was founded in 1998 as a spin-off company from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). It currently employs two people and develops WebotsTM: a commercial software used for mobile robotics prototyping simulation and transfer to real robots (see Fig. 1). In 1998 and 1999 Cyberbotics developed an Aibo® simulator for Sony Ltd. Cyberbotics has now collaborations with the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group (BIRG) and the Swarm Intelligent System Research Group (SWIS) of the EPFL through the Swiss CTI technology transfer program.
WebotsTM runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X and is intended for researchers and teachers interested in mobile robotics. It is commercially available from Cyberbotics Ltd. (http://www.cyberbotics.com).
2. Need for Simulation
Although the final aim is real robotics, it is often very useful to perform simulations prior to investigations with real robots. This is because simulations are easier to setup, less expensive, faster and more convenient to use. Building up new robot models and setting up
experiments only takes a few hours. A simulated robotics setup is less expensive than real robots and real world setups,thus allowing a better design exploration. Simulation often runs faster than real robots while all the parameters are easildisplayed on screen. Simulations
Fig.1. Stages of development of a robot simulation
39make it possible to use computer expensive algorithms that would need ages to run on real robot micro- controllers, like genetic algorithms. Finally, the simulation results are transferable onto the real robots.
Olivier Michel
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86.1278&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
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