Robot manipulator simulation environment overview

Abstract

This thesis paper examines different simulation software for simulating robots. First, the necessary framework in Robot Operating System (ROS) is introduced. Then different simulation environments were studied via their documentation. Finally, a more hands-on comparison be-tween two environments was conducted to further contrast and compare their capabilities. The result of the research is an overview of the environments studied, their strengths, weaknesses and suitability for the use case of a robot manipulator. Based on the research the different simulation environments have lot in common in terms of operating systems and programming languages available. In the other hand, biggest differ-ences were found in types of sensors available and in supported filetypes. Different environ-ments were also found out to have different performance in different tasks, suggesting that the choice for the environment used should be based on the task that is being simulated.