WP6-33

Cloud-based simulation environment

ID	WP6-33
Contributor	ALMENDE
Levels	Platform, Function
Require
Provide	A cloud-based simulation environment, providing simulation as a service
Input
Output
C4D building block
TRL	5
Parent Building block	[]
Contact	ludo at almende.org

Description

The main toolchain developed within C4D for Almende is our cloud-based simulation platform. This platform is based on off-the-shelf open-source tools, integrated and provided as a simulation-as-a-service offering. The main development driver within the Comp4Drones project were the requirements of UC4Demo2: Single rover, multiple drones in an indoor environment, (e.g. smoke-simulation, point of interest, 3-D obstacles) Cloud hosting of the simulation for the project, and similar simulation objects. This development has led to our Asimovo commercial offering: [1]

Improvements

Current state-of-the-art in robotic simulation is Gazebo, combined with ROS. This was used as the baseline simulation that we migrated to our cloud offering. However, we added to this the option to run many different simulators and infrastructure, for example: Airsim, Gazebo+ROS2, Plankton, etc. Another important addition to the cloud-based offering is the capability of still running hardware-in-the-loop, where actual hardware (at the user's premises) can work together with the simulations (which run in the cloud) Our cloud-based platform is capable of simulating multiple drones in the same environment, allowing testing and verification of scenarios in cooperation and conflict resolution.