Robotic Vehicle Proxy Simulation

Energid Technologies proposes the development of a digital simulation to replace robotic vehicles in field studies. It will model the dynamics, terrain interaction, sensors, control, communications, and interfaces of a robotic vehicle with the goal of supporting validation and training. The simulation will be very easy to use by simple execution on a networked PC. It will connect to NASA's robot-control frameworks and be easy to configure using a drag-and-drop interface. It will be thorough in its ability to model a range of environments, from terrestrial to lunar, and through its ability to provide accurate sensor and truth data for analysis. It will include simulation of communication latency and bandwidth restrictions. Sensors will be modeled through a powerful plugin interface that supports tying stimulation of new sensor modalities to terrain and objects. The effort will include the development of robot, sensor, and environment models tailored to the simulation of field-study vehicles, and it will emphasize mimicking the network interfaces used by NASA. The proxy simulation will be able to model multiple and disparate robots simultaneously. Energid will implement and deliver a complete, executable system and an underlying C++ software toolkit.