An In-Memory Physics Environment as a World Model for Robot Motion Planning

Abstract

This paper investigates the utilization of a physics simulation environment as the imagination of a robot, where it creates a replica of the detected terrain in a physics simulation environment in its memory, and “imagines” a simulated version of itself in that memory, performing actions and navigation on the terrain. The physics of the environment simulates the movement of robot parts and its interaction with the objects in the environment and the terrain, thus avoiding the need for explicitly programming many calculations.