Robotics Simulation: Proximity Sensors in V-REP

Описание: The video shows the Pioneer P3DX robot navigating with a Braitenberg algorithm in the V-REP robot simulator ( http://www.coppeliarobotics.com ). It illustrates how V-REP's proximity sensors operate: instead of doing simple discrete ray collision checking, V-REP performs a minimum distance calculation within a detection volume. This allows for a much more continuous detection, and corresponds much more to reality. In addition to that, surfaces can be discarded from detection depending on their normal vector orientation.

The model of the P3DX is courtesy of Eric Rohmer, the wheels are courtesy of Joost, a.k.a. J-m@n

V-REP is the Swiss army knife among robot simulators: you won't find a simulator with more functions, features, or more elaborate APIs:

Cross platform
6 programming approaches (embedded scripts, plugins, add-ons, ROS nodes, remote API clients, or custom solutions)
7 programming languages (C/C++, Python, Java, Lua, Matlab, Octave, and Urbi)
more than 400 different API functions
100 ROS services, 30 ROS publisher types,25 ROS subscriber types, extendable
3 physics engines (ODE, Bullet and Vortex)
Full kinematics solver (IK and FK for ANY mechanisms)
Mesh-mesh interference detection
Mesh-mesh minimum distance calculation
Path planning (holonomic in 2-6 dimensions, non-holonomic for car-like vehicles, and for kinematic chains)
Vision sensors with built-in image processing (fully extendable)- Realistic proximity sensors (minimum distance calculation within a detection volume)
Built-in custom user interfaces, including editor
Fully integrated Reflexxes Motion Library type 4
Surface cutting simulation
Data recording and visualisation (time graphs, X/Y graph or 3D curves)
Integrated shape edit modes, including a semi-automatic primitive shape extraction method
Dynamic particles for water-/air-jet simulation
Model browser with drag-and-drop functionality (also during simulation)
Multi-level undo/redo, movie recorder, simulation of paint, exhaustive documentation, etc.