Simulators for Mobile Social Robots: State-of-the-Art and Challenges

The future robots are expected to work in a shared physical space with humans [1]; however, the presence of humans leads to a dynamic environment that is challenging for mobile robots to navigate. Due to the lack of simulation frameworks, the path planning algorithms designed to navigate a collision-free path in complex human environments are often tested in real environments. This paper identifies critical requirements for an ideal simulator for this task, evaluates existing simulation frameworks, and, most importantly, identifies the challenges and limitations of the existing simulation techniques. First and foremost, we recognize that the simulators needed for testing mobile robots designed for human environments are unique as they must model realistic pedestrian behavior in addition to modeling of mobile robots. Our study finds that Pedsim_ros [2] and a more recent SocNavBench framework [3] are the only two 3D simulation frameworks that meet most of the critical requirements defined in our paper. In summary, we identify the need for developing more simulators that can create realistic 3D pedestrian-rich virtual environments and provide the flexibility of designing complex robots and their sensor models from scratch.