What was the project about?

The sim.I.am robot simulator is a tool developed by Jean-Pierre de la Croix. It is very efficient tool to teach students the basics about mobile robot control theory. It is free to use and modify and the support is excellent.

I first encountered the tool during the Coursera lecture of Dr. Magnus Egerstedt, Control of Mobile Robots. During my PhD studies it proved to be extremely useful to test new ideas. Sometimes introducing new theories in ROS can be very tedious. Sim.I.am is the perfect simulator for prototyping new ideas in the behavior based design idea.

For my studies I had extend the simulator in some parts and modify it in others. It is now possible to choose the desired map at the beginning of the simulation which can be helpful when you want to quickly test your ideas in different situations. Furthermore, I have added a simple camera. This was necessary to implement a Visual Servoing controller which is part of my PhD thesis. Also, you can now specify a set of targets before starting the simulation. Finally, it is possible to choose between 2 types of obstacles. The static ones that were already available in the original Sim.I.am version and some newly implemented dynamic ones. The dynamic obstacles can have different behaviors. They can either move in a straight line, go back and fourth or move in a circle. You can set the speed, radius or length of the line.