A simulation environment for OpenRTM-aist

Unified testing of multiple heterogeneous robotic software components is a challenging problem and many robotic systems rely on vendor-specific tools for testing and evaluation of individual subsystems. The consequence is often the unexpected interactions between components that arise during system integration. OpenRTM-aist is a distributed software framework that standardises the development of robotic systems while encouraging software reuse and improving the efficiency of the system integration process. The problem is the lack of a well-integrated simulation tool that provides a safe, virtual test environment for evaluating OpenRTM-aist components. This paper presents a simulation environment for OpenRTM-aist. As opposed to creating a built-in simulation tool tied to the OpenRTM-aist architecture, we use an existing general purpose robot simulator, namely Gazebo, because of its modular design and framework independent architecture. We show that by creating an interface layer to Gazebo, robotic systems developed using OpenRTM-aist can be tested in Gazebo simulation without modifications to the underlying software code. In addition, we demonstrate the interoperability between OpenRTM-aist component-based robot systems and Player client programs in achieving a global robot task in the same simulation context.