Collaborative Robots Sim: A Simulation Environment Of Air-Ground Robots With Strong Physical Interactivity

Abstract

The collaborative robot peers that are able to perform a variety of missions get attention. The current simulations or research platforms only focus on the information interaction between the robots leading to great limitations in the simulation of collaborative robots. In this paper, a simulation environment for collaborative robots with strong physical interaction is proposed. We analyzed the characteristics of various robot simulation platforms and built the main "control-driving-rectify" framework of the environment based on Gazebo. For a better integration of UAV, UGV, manipulators and the physical simulation framework, we modelled the dynamics simulation system of UAV by propeller dynamics and refine the definition of UAV in the physical simulation after an accurate configuration of them. In the process of environment construction, some plain but innovative and valuable physical interaction modules were created which play a major role in the success of the simulation. Finally, the efficiency of this simulation environment is illustrated and verified through the experiments and specific examples.