Simulation of small humanoid robots for soccer domain

In this paper, we illustrate the development of a realistic simulation of a humanoid robot model in a virtual environment using USARSim (Urban Search and Rescue Simulator). USARSim provides an accurate 3D simulation of a virtual environment with a detailed rendering and a realistic physics. Moreover, USARSim allows users to observe the virtual environment from different views. One of these is the egocentric view, which can simulate the camera mounted on the robot. The small humanoid robot presented in this work is Robovie-M, developed by VStone Ltd. (Japan). This robot is used by our team Artisti in the RobotCup soccer competitions. Reported experiments compare the behaviors of a real robot and of its virtual model, when controlled by the same control software to asses the possibility to faithfully simulate a robot with 22 degrees of freedom in USARSim. Moreover, we discuss the possibility to close the control loop of the robot in simulation, by simulating also the main robot sensor, i.e. the camera. The experiments show that USARSim, despite being a simple simulator based on a low cost computer game, provides an accurate enough simulation of the physics and a realistic rendering of the 3D scene enabling a faithful simulation of a small humanoid robot at low cost. Thus, one can entirely test the robot software modules in the simulation (namely: the motion control modules, the vision system modules and, by closing the robot control loop in simulation, the behavior and behavior-selection modules). (C) 2009 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.