Applying robot-in-the-loop-simulation to mobile robot systems

Simulation-based study plays important roles in robotic systems development. This paper describes robot-in-the-loop simulation, which is a novel simulation method that we developed to allow real robots and robot models to work together for system-wide measurement and test. To support robot-in-the-loop simulation, a simulated virtual environment is developed. Several kinds of sensor/actuator interface models are defined to allow real robots to interact with the virtual environment. To demonstrate the capability of robot-in-the-loop simulation, three mobile robot examples were developed and are presented in the paper in an incremental way. These examples illustrate the usages and configurations of robot-in-the-loop simulation under different situations