Web-Based Mobile Robot Simulator

Many roboticists rely on simulation during the early phases of developing navigation algorithms for their autonomous mobile robots. While many commercial robots now come with robust development environments that include visual simulators, these tools aren’t available to robotics researchers who are working with a custom-built robot or who have not yet determined which commercial robot will satisfy their requirements. Even researchers using one of the commercial development environments will have difficulty sharing their simulation results with colleagues or others who do not have access to the commercial development tools. Believing that the ability to share simulation results visually with the greatest number of people would be an important capability to have led to the development of the web-based simulation approach described in this paper.