Pioneer Robot Simulation

Exhibitor: Daniel Moylan

Supervisor: Gordon Wyeth

Research Group: Complex and Intelligent Systems

Industry Sector: Scientific / Research Services

This Thesis is concerned with the simulation of the ActivMedia Pioneer Robot. The developed product includes functionality to simulate motion, vision and sonar sensing as well as a high fidelity visualisation to the robot interacting with the environment.

The Simulator that has been developed is designed to utilise existing network infrastructure as a means of communication between the control processes and the simulator of robot. Development has included creating interfaces that allow users of the system to seamlessly switch between use of the simulator or the robot.

Although this simulator is intended to be a generic device that can be used in any context the project has been developed to best simulate the robot in terms of the parameters of the RatSLAM project. RatSLAM is an ongoing robotics project, based at the University of Queensland, which aims to perform SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) using rodent brain logic. The simulator is customised to include functions specific to RatSLAM, for example identifying landmarks in the same way as the onboard camera.

To complete this project a 3-D visualisation of the robot interacting in the lab environment has be developed. This visualisation includes user functionality to control the simulator (or Robot) and modify the environment when in simulation mode.

Thesis Document (PDF)