USARSim: Providing a Framework for Multi-Robot Performance Evaluation

Published

January 31, 2006

Author(s)

Stephen B. Balakirsky, Christopher J. Scrapper Jr, Stefano Carpin, M L. Lewis

Abstract

Research efforts in urban search and rescue robotics have grown substantially in recent years. Two important robotic competitions (a robot physical league and a high-level infrastructure simulation league) were established in 2001 under the RoboCup umbrella to foster collaboration amongst institutions and to provide benchmark test environments for system evaluation. While these leagues play valuable roles, a significant gap existed between simulating disaster infrastructure and implementing agent behaviors on real hardware. In this paper we describe a software simulation framework intended to be a bridge between these communities. The framework allows for the realistic modeling of robots, sensors, and actuators, as well as complex, unstructured, dynamic environments. Multiple heterogeneous agents can be concurrently placed in the simulation environment thus allowing for team or group evaluations. This paper presents a description of the simulation along with results from the RoboCup 2006 Virtual Robot Competition in which it was used and a roadmap of the framework s future directions.

Proceedings Title

Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop| 2006 | PerMIS

Conference Dates

August 21-23, 2006

Conference Location

Gaithersburg, MD

Conference Title

Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) Workshop 2006

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

performance evaluation, robotics, simulation, USARSim

Citation

Balakirsky, S. , Scrapper, C. , Carpin, S. and Lewis, M. (2006), USARSim: Providing a Framework for Multi-Robot Performance Evaluation, Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems Workshop| 2006 | PerMIS, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=823595 (Accessed December 14, 2024)