jmeSim: An Open Source, Multi Platform Robotics Simulator

Abstract

Simulation of autonomous and teleoperated robots has become a staple of the robotics research community. Accurate physics simulation, high quality rendering, open source code, and multi platform implementability are essential qualities for simulation packages. Many simulation environments exist, each with a range of advantages and disadvantages, that address the above features to dierent degrees, but none achieves them all. Recently, the Robot Operating System (ROS) [Quigley et al., 2009] has provided researchers with a standardised platform for robotics research, and has been widely adopted. This paper presents jmeSim, an open source, multi-platform robotic simulation package, which provides excellent graphical and physical delity, and provides tight integration with ROS. The simulation environment is described in detail, and several demonstrations of its capabilities are presented.