Designing of online simulation environment for development control algorithms for robots operating in rough terrains

In the search and rescue situation at the disaster area, the searching task should be conducted by robots in order to avoid the second disaster. We study crawler robots that can traverse rough terrains and are used in such search operations. This paper describes the designing of an online simulation environment using which we can develop control algorithms for crawler robots, especially for the robot named “Kenaf.” We use USARSim that can simulate three-dimensional space. By employing realtime simulation, we connect a real robot controller and the simulator directly and realize online simulation using the real robot controller. The tests show that the created simulation system can be used for the development of control algorithms.