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Physical engine for non-planar autonomous vehicle

Hello all.

I am interesting in simulating an autonomous vehicle. It supposed to travel in non-planar environment and use GPS, IMU and LIDAR sensors for navigation and obstacle avoidance.

I am deliberating about which physical engine is the more suitable for my objectives ODE , BULLET, SIMBODY or DART.

I will be happy, if anyone can share some experience or throw some light about what are the advantages and disadvantages of these engines in general and specifically in relation to my intentions.

Thanks.

(regarding hsu question) My simulation fidelity target is achieving difference of less than 10% between the simulation and the reality. For example, given certain vehicle power, terrain slope and friction coefficients. I interesting that the achieved velocity in the simulation will be in the 10% proximity of the real world experiment results. same rational also goes regarding steering commands and sensors data.

Asked by dmeltz on 2014-04-09 05:48:27 UTC

Comments

what's INS?

Asked by hsu on 2014-04-09 19:33:32 UTC

Do you have any modeling fidelity, accuracy or performance targets?

Asked by hsu on 2014-04-09 19:34:46 UTC

INS means Inertial Navigation System - it a system that combines, usualy by means of calman filter, data from GPS and IMU in order to produce more accurate Localisation data, and also in order to overcame weaknesses of each of them like GPS signal loss and error accumulation of IMU. (in order to simplify my question i changed to IMU).

Asked by dmeltz on 2014-04-10 01:26:36 UTC

Answers

ODE currently has the best support, though we are rapidly adding support for bullet, simbody, and DART. Also, gazebo's design makes it easy to switch between physics engines; there are just a few model parameters to adjust that are specific to each physics engine.

ODE will be the easiest to use short-term, but it should be easy to experiment with other engines by using the -e command-line option.

Asked by scpeters on 2014-04-09 19:29:48 UTC

Comments

According to this post here from Jose Luis Rivero you have to have bullet compiled in and the current debs don't do that. Once the plugin architecture is completed it will be easy to switch.

Asked by Kevin on 2014-04-19 09:55:29 UTC