A survey and comparison of commercial and open-source robotic simulator software

TLDR

Robotic simulators are essential for testing algorithm efficiency, safety, and robustness, especially in human‑centric domains such as medical robotics, yet no up‑to‑date survey has compared the growing array of commercial and open‑source tools. The study aims to provide a comprehensive comparison of the latest commercial and open‑source robotic simulation platforms and their real‑robot interfacing capabilities. The authors conduct a comparative analysis and demonstrate, via a case study, how control code can be ported from simulation to a real robot. They provide publicly accessible, step‑by‑step installation guides and downloadable code examples for the surveyed simulators.

Abstract

Simulators play an important role in robotics research as tools for testing the efficiency, safety, and robustness of new algorithms. This is of particular importance in scenarios that require robots to closely interact with humans, e.g., in medical robotics, and in assistive environments. Despite the increasing number of commercial and open-source robotic simulation tools, to the best of our knowledge, no comprehensive up-to-date survey paper has reviewed and compared their features. This survey paper presents a comprehensive and detailed overview and a comparison between the most recent and popular commercial and open-source robotic software for simulation and interfacing with real robots. A case-study is presented, showing the versatility in porting the control code from a simulation to a real robot. Finally, a detailed step-by-step documentation on software installation and usage has been made available publicly on the Internet, together with downloadable code examples.