Is v-rep able to and/or suitable for on-line robot testing?

[clarkwu]

Throughout the official video tutorials provided by V-REP, I understand that V-REP is for sure a good soft tool for off-line robot simulation; but how about on-line testing? whether V-REP is able to visualize various sensor data on-the-fly ( lidar,radar, vision etc.), to handle real-time path plan and robot control?

thanks

[coppelia]

Hello,

V-REP has a real-time mode, which is not a strict real-time mode: all it is doing is try to keep the simulation time synchronized with the real time (i.e. pause a bit when simulation runs too fast).
You can use V-REP to visualize sensor data on the fly, control a robot and do path planning, but whether it will be manageable in real-time is dependent on the complexity of the environment, the number of robots, the selected time step, the amount of sensors, the PC you are using, the type of calculations you are performing, etc.

Cheers

[N_rob]

Hi. I'm doing the modelization of a robot on V-Rep and i'm doing its dampers by prismatic joints, the problem is that when i run the simulation the joints start to turn with the motor_joint so i should fix it with a shape that dosen't move , i have the idea but i don't really know how to do it.

[coppelia]

Hello,

please start a new topic to avoid confusion with this topic.

Thanks

[i2rrobot]

Hello,

V-REP has a real-time mode, which is not a strict real-time mode: all it is doing is try to keep the simulation time synchronized with the real time (i.e. pause a bit when simulation runs too fast).
You can use V-REP to visualize sensor data on the fly, control a robot and do path planning, but whether it will be manageable in real-time is dependent on the complexity of the environment, the number of robots, the selected time step, the amount of sensors, the PC you are using, the type of calculations you are performing, etc.

Cheers

Thanks for your reply.
So I assume V-REP is ready for real robot control. Then I am still wondering what is the mechanism for V-REP to do this.
For example, in order to retrieve and visualize real data from a physical lidar sensor, what interface should be used in V-REP? is there existing sensor driver module like in ROS? Any examples available?

clark

[coppelia]

Hello Clark,

have a look at this page, that lists the various available interfaces in V-REP, including a ROS interface.
What is often used is the remote API, which allows to connect your robot/sensor/etc. to V-REP in an easy, lightweight and cross-platform way.

Cheers