Making time make sense in robotic simulation

Abstract

Typical dynamic robotic simulators model the rigid body dynamics of robots using ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Such software libraries have traditionally focused on simulating the rigid body dynamics robustly, quickly, and accurately toward obtaining consistent dynamics performance between simulation and in situ. However, simulation practitioners have generally yet to investigate maintaining temporal consistency within the simulation: given that simulations run at variable rates, how does the roboticist ensure the robot’s control software (controller, planners, and other user-level processes) runs at the same rate that it would run in the physical world? This paper describes an intersection of research between Robotics and Real-Time Operating Systems that investigates mechanisms for addressing this problem.