Title :
Kelpie: A ROS-Based Multi-robot Simulator for Water Surface and Aerial Vehicles
Author :
Mendonca, Raphael ; Santana, Pedro ; Marques, F. ; Lourenco, Andre ; Silva, Jaime ; Barata, Jose
Author_Institution :
CTS-UNINOVA, New Univ. of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract :
Testing and debugging real hardware is a time consuming task, in particular for the case of aquatic robots, for which it is necessary to transport and deploy the robots on the water. Performing waterborne and airborne field experiments with expensive hardware embedded in not yet fully functional prototypes is a highly risky endeavour. In this sense, physics-based 3D simulators are key for a fast paced and affordable development of such robotic systems. This paper contributes with a modular, open-source, and soon to be freely online available, ROS-based multi-robot simulator specially focused for aerial and water surface vehicles. This simulator is being developed as part of the RIVERWATCH experiment in the ECHORD european FP7 project. This experiment aims at demonstrating a multi-robot system for remote monitoring of riverine environments.
Keywords :
autonomous aerial vehicles; control system analysis computing; digital simulation; marine vehicles; multi-robot systems; ECHORD European FP7 project; Kelpie; RIVERWATCH experiment; ROS-based multirobot simulator; aerial vehicles; airborne field experiment; aquatic robots; multirobot system; physics-based 3D simulators; real hardware debugging; real hardware testing; remote monitoring; riverine environments; water surface vehicles; waterborne field experiment; Computational modeling; Force; Robot sensing systems; Surface waves; Vehicles; Multi-Robots; Physics-Based Simulation; ROS; Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; Unmanned Surface Vehicles;
Conference_Titel :
Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2013 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Manchester
DOI :
10.1109/SMC.2013.621