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Introduction

Hello, this wiki is for the internship I did at NORLAB, Nordic Robotics laboratory, during the winter of 2022 for SNOW project and more specifically for the SNOW-Sim project.

My mandate was to find among the simulators on the market, the best simulator for autonomous vehicles in winter and off-road conditions.

All simulators corresponding to our domain have been searched.

Among those who had all the requirements, only 3 were selected (Ignition, AGX Dynamics & Omniverse) and only 2 tested (Ignition, AGX Dynamics).

At the end of the tests, only Gazebo Ignition (Fortress Version) met our expectations. It is therefore this one that has been deployed and for which you will be able to find the installation files, modeling files and its Docker images.

Figure: SnowRunner game with Havok physics engine

Mandate: Find, test and deploy a simulator for development, training & validation.

Stages:

• Stage 0: Setup environment & RL 1
• Stage 1: Research and analysis & RL 2
• Stage 2: Research and analysis & RL 3
• Stage 3: Testing & RL 4
• Stage 4: Deployment & Documentation

Definition

Problem:

• Off-road environment in the subartic region
• Complex / Uncertain environment
• Extreme climate: winds, flurries, blizzard, ...

Requierments:

• Hardware requirements:

  • Linux
  • ROS
  • Sensors output
  • Headless mode

• Reliability of physics engines:

  • Mobile robotics
  • Real time

• Software:

  • Maintenance
  • Support community

Analyzed Physics:

• Base of physics: Kinematic, System dynamics, Particle & Fluid dynamics
• Body physics: Rigid, Multi & Soft Body
• Vehicle physics*: Drivetrain, Braking, Suspension, Sterring, Tires, Mass distribution & Aerodynamics
• Physics for modeling: Particle & Fluid dynamics, Soft Body

Figure: Off-Road with Unreal physics engine

Candidate simulators

• Gazebo Ignition (Open Robotics)
• AGX Dynamics & AGX Unity
• Omniverse(Nvidia)
• CARLA
• SVL(LG) -> Discontinued
• CoppeliaSlim(V-REP)
• BeamNG
• Havok (Games Dynamics SDK)
• AirSim (Microsoft)
• Chrono Project (Google)
• Applied Intuition

Github repositories

• Reinforcement Learning
• Simulator
• Modeling
• Docker
• Report