Simulator
The open source MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge simulator is provided by Open Robotics, the global leader in software for robotics simulation and application development.
The simulation platform for the MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge will be built on Ignition and Robot Operating System (ROS).
Ignition Gazebo is an open-source 3D robotics simulator. It accurately and efficiently simulates robots for a wide range of applications, including maritime robotics. It has a robust physics engine, advanced 3D graphics, and programmatic interfaces, including integration with ROS. Ignition also offers an online 3D model repository, Ignition Fuel, that offers various robot and environment 3D assets readily available for simulation.
ROS is an open source software development kit that helps to build robot applications It offers a standard software platform to developers across industries that will carry them from research and prototyping all the way through to deployment and production. Ignition integrates well with ROS, which means that software developed using ROS for simulation in Ignition can easily be ported to work on real hardware, facilitating a smooth transition from simulation to reality.
The simulation environment created for the MBZIRC Maritime Grand Challenge will consist of a large coastal region, UAVs with different sensor configurations, a USV model, a robot manipulator, and multiple target vessels. A set of ROS2 APIs will be exposed for controlling robots and reading data from sensors in simulation. Inter-robot communication will be provided through a separate set of APIs, and the communication links are subject to package loss and interferences that are common in outdoor wireless communication.
The MBZIRC simulation platform will run on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal). Users can install the software from source for local testing and development. In addition, Docker images of the simulation setup will also be made available.
The simulator uses historical weather data provided by meteoblue to simulate realistic weather conditions.