ASCARI: A component based simulator for distributed mobile robot systems

Abstract

ASCARI is a simulator dedicated to distributed and cooperative mobile robotics systems, designed as a framework for implementing and testing multi-agent collaborative algorithms, especially suited to evaluate algorithms performances with a non-perfect communication channel (e.g. delayed, limited bandwidth, limited range). Compared to state-of-art simulators, ASCARI meets a complex new requirement: inter-agent communication has to be integrated in the simulation loop. The project core is a simulation server with a dynamic engine, a synchronization facility and a set of simulated communications providing the characteristics of the communication channel. Different channel requirements can be added by users. Inter-agent communication is provided in a transparent way to the user by template communication classes. Simulated communications and filters are handled automatically. The simulator is completed by a 2D-3D viewer and a simple GUI. In this paper we describe ASCARI and validate it on a distributed traffic control and a task assignment algorithm.