Inside the Virtual Robotics Challenge: Simulating Real-Time Robotic Disaster Response

TLDR

The DARPA Virtual Robotics Challenge simulates real‑world disaster response tasks, posing challenges for task‑oriented, real‑time robot competitions. The study introduces a cloud‑hosted software framework to support robot simulation for the VRC. The framework integrates an enhanced Gazebo simulator for high‑fidelity, multi‑sensor robot modeling with CloudSim to automate simulation deployment on cloud infrastructure. Results from the VRC and a discussion of the framework’s performance are presented.

Abstract

This paper presents the software framework established to facilitate cloud-hosted robot simulation. The framework addresses the challenges associated with conducting a task-oriented and real-time robot competition, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC), designed to mimic reality. The core of the framework is the Gazebo simulator, a platform to simulate robots, objects, and environments, as well as the enhancements made for the VRC to maintain a high fidelity simulation using a high degree of freedom and multisensor robot. The other major component used is the CloudSim tool, designed to enhance the automation of robotics simulation using existing cloud technologies. The results from the VRC and a discussion are also detailed in this work.