Simulating range cameras for complex terrain robot mobility

We have developed three simple simulations for range cameras (also called 3D cameras or flash LIDARs) that may be integrated into existing 3D robot visualisation and simulation frameworks. They are able to generate data at better than video framerates with minimal additional processing by leveraging the OpenGL graphics engine. We have used these simulations in our work on applying machine learning to the task of autonomous complex terrain robot mobility and 3D SLAM. We found that with a simple noise model it is possible to obtain realistic results.