Development of Three Dimensional Dynamics Simulator with Omnidirectional Vision Model

In the field of robotics, simulators are important tools to verify algorithms. They are required to generate movements and physical interactions of objects based on the dynamics and to simulate outputs of sensors. However, few simulators of robots simulate dynamics of objects and outputs of sensors, in particular omnidirectional cameras, which are effective sensors because they can acquire an omnidirectional field of view at one time. In this study, omnidirectional vision simulators are developed based on the ray casting method. The proposed simulators enables to render accurate omnidirectional images and an intersection test is developed for speeding up. These are able to be used in ”Gazebo” which is open source 3D dynamics simulator. The proposed methods are verified through comparison of the rendered images with the images which are obtained by real omnidirectional vision sensor.