Building a ROS-Based Testbed for Realistic Multi-Robot Simulation: Taking the Exploration as an Example
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Le2i Laboratory, University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM), 90010 Belfort, France
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CAR Team, IMT Lille Douai, 59500 Douai, France
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DISP Laboratory, University Lyon 2, 69007 Lyon, France
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Robotics 2017, 6(3), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics6030021
Received: 9 August 2017
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Revised: 8 September 2017
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Accepted: 11 September 2017
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Published: 12 September 2017
While the robotics community agrees that the benchmarking is of high importance to objectively compare different solutions, there are only few and limited tools to support it. To address this issue in the context of multi-robot systems, we have defined a benchmarking process based on experimental designs, which aimed at improving the reproducibility of experiments by making explicit all elements of a benchmark such as parameters, measurements and metrics. We have also developed a ROS (Robot Operating System)-based testbed with the goal of making it easy for users to validate, benchmark, and compare different algorithms including coordination strategies. Our testbed uses the MORSE (Modular OpenRobots Simulation Engine) simulator for realistic simulation and a computer cluster for decentralized computation. In this paper, we present our testbed in details with the architecture and infrastructure, the issues encountered in implementing the infrastructure, and the automation of the deployment. We also report a series of experiments on multi-robot exploration, in order to demonstrate the capabilities of our testbed.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Yan, Z.; Fabresse, L.; Laval, J.; Bouraqadi, N. Building a ROS-Based Testbed for Realistic Multi-Robot Simulation: Taking the Exploration as an Example. Robotics 2017, 6, 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics6030021
AMA Style
Yan Z, Fabresse L, Laval J, Bouraqadi N. Building a ROS-Based Testbed for Realistic Multi-Robot Simulation: Taking the Exploration as an Example. Robotics. 2017; 6(3):21. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics6030021
Chicago/Turabian StyleYan, Zhi, Luc Fabresse, Jannik Laval, and Noury Bouraqadi. 2017. "Building a ROS-Based Testbed for Realistic Multi-Robot Simulation: Taking the Exploration as an Example" Robotics 6, no. 3: 21. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics6030021
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