Mobile Robot Simulator

The mobile robot simulator is based on a rudimentary version developed by a fellow PhD student at the time. The rudimentary simulator had bugs in the movement of robots and was designed for circular differential drive robots. It was also slow and incapable of simulating several robots simultaneously. The simulator was extended to account for robots of different shapes and drive types by optimising (vectorising) code and also by creating Matlab mex files . Also, autonomous navigation features such as reactive control for obstacle avoidance and path planning were incorporated. Eventually, the simulator was extended to a multi-robot exploration task where robots are autonomously selected and monitored during the operation of the task. Some screenshots of the Matlab simulator are shown below. Some screen recording videos of the simulator are also provided below.

Fig 1: Screenshot of Matlab simulator

Fig 2: Simulation of multiple robots.

Fig 3: Area explored by individual robots during simulation.

Fig 4: Several robots selected for an exploring a large environment in a final version of the simulator

Videos (Simulator Screen Recording)

For more details on this project refer to the following:

Journal Paper:

1. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Towards a Robust Feedback System for Coordinating a Hierarchical Multi-Robot System. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2014, 62(2), 91-107.

2. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Mapping and Exploration in a Hierarchical Heterogeneous Multi-Robot System Using Limited Capability Robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2013, 61(6), 565-579.

3. Chand, P., and Carnegie, D. A. Development of a Reduced Human User Input Task Allocation Method for Multiple Robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2012, 60(10), 1231-1244.

4. Chand, P., and Carnegie, D. A. A Two-Tiered Global Path Planning Strategy for Limited Memory Mobile Robots. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2012, 60(2), 309-321.

5. Chand, P., and Carnegie, D. A. Development of a Navigation System for Heterogeneous Mobile Robots. International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2011, 10(3), 250-278.

6. Chand, P., and Carnegie, D. A. Feedback Coordination of Limited Capability Mobile Robots. International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2010, 8(1/2/3/4), 144–157.

Conference Proceedings Paper:

1. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Feedback Coordination of Limited Capability Mobile Robots. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Mechatronics and Machine Vision in Practice, 2008, pp. 531–536, Auckland, New Zealand.

2. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Task Allocation and Coordination for Limited Capability Mobile Robots. In Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2007, Brisbane, Australia. (CDROM proceedings. Also available at https://www.araa.asn.au/acra/acra2007/papers/paper94final.pdf)

3. Lee-Johnson, C. P., Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Applications of an Adaptive Hierarchical Mobile Robot Navigation System. In Proceedings of the Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2007, Brisbane, Australia. (CDROM proceedings. Also available at https://www.araa.asn.au/acra/acra2007/papers/paper73final.pdf)

4. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Memory-Time Tradeoffs in a Path Planning Approach Utilising Limited Memory Robots. In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Computational Intelligence, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2007, pp. 243–248, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Available here

5. Chand, P. and Carnegie, D. A. Reactive Control of a Tricycle Mobile Robot. In Proceedings of the Twelfth Electronics New Zealand Conference, 2005, pp. 129 – 134, Manukau, New Zealand. Available here