Micromouse 3D simulator with dynamics capability: a Unity environment approach

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2021

Authors

Zawadniak, PVF (Author) Other; Piardi, L (Author) Other; Brito, T (Author) Other; Lima, J (Author) Other; Paulo Gomes da Costa (Author) FEUP; Monteiro, ALR (Author) Other; Pedro Luís Cerqueira Gomes da Costa (Author) FEUP; Pereira, AI (Author) Other

Journal

Title: SN Applied Sciences

Vol. 3

Publisher: Springer Nature

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 1 Citation

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-00T-GBQ

DOI: 10.1007/s42452-021-04239-7

Abstract (EN): The micromouse competition has been gaining prominence in the robotic atmosphere, due to the challenging and multidisciplinary characteristics provided by the teams' duels, being a gateway for those who intend to deepen their studies in autonomous robotics. In this context, this paper presents a realistic micromouse simulator developed with Unity software, a widely game engine with dynamics and 3D development platform used. The developed simulator has hardware-in-the-loop capabilities, aims to be simple to use, it can be customizable, and designed to be as similar as possible to the real robot configurations. In this way, the proposed simulator requires few modifications to port the microcontroller code to a real robot. Therefore, the framework presented in this work allows the user to simulate the development of new algorithm strategies dedicated to competition and also hardware updates. The simulation supports several mazes, from previous competitions and has the possibility to add different mazes elaborated by the user. Thus, the features and functionality of the simulator can serve to accelerate the project's development of the beginning and advanced competitors, using real models to reduce the gap between the mouse robot behavior in the simulation and the reality. The developed simulation environment is available to the community.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 11