Toward Code-Aware Robotic Simulation

This vision paper explores the potential to dramatically enrich robotic simulations with insights gleaned from program analysis, and promises to be a key tool for future robot system developers to reduce effort and find tricky corner cases. Robotic simulations are a critical, cost-effective tool for developing, testing, and validating robotic software. However, most robotics simulations are intentionally unaware of how the code works. Our approach leverages two recent developments: 1) automatic program analysis that can semantically ground program variables and predicates in physical quantities like distance, velocity, or force; and 2) standardized simulation specifications that identify both what elements are simulated and also how they are simulated. Code-aware robotic simulation could enable robot system developers who increasingly rely on simulation to lower the cost and risk of system development by having access to richer simulation scenarios. We describe the approach using a detailed, step-by-step illustration for C++ using the Robot Operating System (ROS) and the Simulation Description Format (SDFormat), and identify key challenges to realizing this vision.