4 ms·

Webots robot simulator went open-source

89 points by lukicdarkoo 6y ago

ptrott2017 6y ago
If you are unfamiliar - Webots is a fantastic robotics simulation platform. Originally developed at EPFL in Switzerland and then as commercial software by Cyberbotics - its now* available under the Apache 2 license (with commercial support available from the Cyberbotics team). *edit - Webots went open source with the 2019 release. see: https://www.cyberbotics.com/doc/blog/Webots-2019-a-release https://www.cyberbotics.com/doc/blog/Webots-2019-a-release It ships with a good collection of modifiable models including full robots as well as multiple sensors, actuators etc. Its is also simple to build and add your own robot models or integrate with other simulators. Controller programs can be written in C, C++, Python, ROS, Java or MATLAB via an easy to use API. Hopefully the open source edition will drive increased adoption. Learn more here: https://www.cyberbotics.com/ https://www.cyberbotics.com/ and parent discussion link goes to the github source code.
- narrationbox 6y ago
  Better Open AI gyms at last.
  - lukicdarkoo 6y ago
    There is OpenAI gym interface for Webots: https://github.com/aidudezzz/deepbots https://github.com/aidudezzz/deepbots The interface simplifies usage of Reinforcement Learning algorithms with Webots.
smarx007 6y ago
How does it compare to Gazebo? See https://lenkaspace.net/tutorials/programming/robotSimulatorsComparison https://lenkaspace.net/tutorials/programming/robotSimulators... for the most recent comparison of sim environments for robotics.
- lukicdarkoo 6y ago
  There is an article about performance comparison and Webots is way ahead of the competition: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04627.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04627.pdf There is a Wikipedia article comparing different robotics simulators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics_simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics_simulator You may find a podcast with Olivier (CEO of Cyberbotics) interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy75VfUg9II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy75VfUg9II
snarfy 6y ago
Interesting. I just got openrave working on my machine this weekend. As someone completely new to the realm of robot simulation it's nice to see this on the front page.

89 points by lukicdarkoo 6y ago

ptrott2017 6y ago

If you are unfamiliar - Webots is a fantastic robotics simulation platform. Originally developed at EPFL in Switzerland and then as commercial software by Cyberbotics - its now* available under the Apache 2 license (with commercial support available from the Cyberbotics team). *edit - Webots went open source with the 2019 release. see: https://www.cyberbotics.com/doc/blog/Webots-2019-a-release https://www.cyberbotics.com/doc/blog/Webots-2019-a-release It ships with a good collection of modifiable models including full robots as well as multiple sensors, actuators etc. Its is also simple to build and add your own robot models or integrate with other simulators. Controller programs can be written in C, C++, Python, ROS, Java or MATLAB via an easy to use API. Hopefully the open source edition will drive increased adoption. Learn more here: https://www.cyberbotics.com/ https://www.cyberbotics.com/ and parent discussion link goes to the github source code.

narrationbox 6y ago
Better Open AI gyms at last.
- lukicdarkoo 6y ago
  There is OpenAI gym interface for Webots: https://github.com/aidudezzz/deepbots https://github.com/aidudezzz/deepbots The interface simplifies usage of Reinforcement Learning algorithms with Webots.

smarx007 6y ago

How does it compare to Gazebo? See https://lenkaspace.net/tutorials/programming/robotSimulatorsComparison https://lenkaspace.net/tutorials/programming/robotSimulators... for the most recent comparison of sim environments for robotics.

lukicdarkoo 6y ago
There is an article about performance comparison and Webots is way ahead of the competition: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04627.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.04627.pdf There is a Wikipedia article comparing different robotics simulators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics_simulator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotics_simulator You may find a podcast with Olivier (CEO of Cyberbotics) interesting as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy75VfUg9II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy75VfUg9II

snarfy 6y ago

Interesting. I just got openrave working on my machine this weekend. As someone completely new to the realm of robot simulation it's nice to see this on the front page.