Aerial vehicle simulation options

KimMcG · 2023-10-04T18:31:38.503Z

Hi all!

In the light of the next Aerial ROS meeting about simulation, there is now a start of a page in the aerial robotics landscape. Anybody feels that there are any simulator that is important that is missing from this list? Or what is your experience with these?

These simulators have been found to support aerial flight:

AIRsim (GitHub - microsoft/AirSim: Open source simulator for autonomous vehicles built on Unreal Engine / Unity, from Microsoft AI & Research):
Flightgear (https://www.flightgear.org/)
Gazebo (https://gazebosim.org/):
Isaac Sim (https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac-sim):
Pybullet (Bullet Real-Time Physics Simulation | Home of Bullet and PyBullet: physics simulation for games, visual effects, robotics and reinforcement learning.):
RealFlight (https://www.realflight.com/):
Webots (https://www.cyberbotics.com/):
XPlane (https://www.flightgear.org/)

These are some aerial robotics for simulation (with ROS support I think):

RotorS (GitHub - ethz-asl/rotors_simulator: RotorS is a UAV gazebo simulator):
Flightmare (GitHub - uzh-rpg/flightmare: An Open Flexible Quadrotor Simulator):
Gym-pybullet-drones (GitHub - utiasDSL/gym-pybullet-drones: PyBullet Gym environments for single and multi-agent reinforcement learning of quadcopter control):
Pegasus Simulator (https://pegasussimulator.github.io/):

Also, there are also some aerial dynamic models that people can use as plugins for these simulators, but arguably there are most likely a lot more out there so this.

JSBSim (GitHub - JSBSim-Team/jsbsim: An open source flight dynamics & control software library)
YASim (https://wiki.flightgear.org/YASim) ’

Hope to know more about your experience with these so we can use that as fuel for our next meeting

github.com

ROS-Aerial/aerial_robotic_landscape/blob/main/simulation.md

# Simulation of Aerial Robotics

Simulation is crucial when working with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Testing different trajectories and control paradigms in a simulator before implementing them on the real platform ensures not only safety but also facilitates development.

This page presents several simulator options for aerial robotics enthusiasts.

## Simulators

The following simulators have their own integrated physics simulation and basic rendering capabilities. They are capable of simulating the aerodynamic forces necessary to keep UAVs airborne:

* **AIRsim** (https://github.com/microsoft/AirSim): An open-source project for aerial vehicle simulation by Microsoft.
* **Flightgear** (https://www.flightgear.org/) This open source simulator is mostly meant for training pilots but have been used for UAvs as well. This simulator JBSsim with unreal engine
* **Gazebo** (https://gazebosim.org/): A staple simulation widely used by the robotics and ROS (Robot Operating System) community.
* **Isaac Sim** (https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac-sim): A simulator built by Nvidia for robotics with a strong focus on rendering.
* **Pybullet** (https://pybullet.org/wordpress/): A real-time physics simulation that easily interfaces with Python.
* **RealFlight** (https://www.realflight.com/): A simulator heavily used in the RC (Remote Control) community.
* **Webots** (https://www.cyberbotics.com/): Another versatile robotics simulator with excellent ROS support.
* **XPlane** (https://www.flightgear.org/) Similar to Flightgear (but then with a commercial license) this simulator was initially made for realistically flying planes for pilots, although it have been used for UAV flight.

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KimMcG · 2023-10-04T18:43:26.924Z

I’d also like to add that there was [a workshop in ICRA 2023 London about Aerial Simulation](The Role of Robotics Simulators for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, which will be interesting to watch as well for anybody interested:

Moreover, the next meeting of the ROS-aerial community working group will discuss this topic as well. Hope to see you there!

KimMcG · 2023-10-12T11:17:03.895Z

A nice list of characteristics of an aerial robotic simulation should have we defined at our last meeting:

Physics gravity
Interaction objects with aerial robotics
Vision based but real is better
Interaction with water
Aerial manipulation
Load real world environments
Network simulation
Aerodynamic effects
System ID
Easily define new vehicles
Simulation electronics and battery
Ground station simulation
SITL/HITL interfaces

Any additions?

MrNeoBlue · 2023-10-16T03:27:36.721Z

Can we call DCS world a simulator?
The graphics are much better, but modding is difficult.

KimMcG · 2023-10-16T07:26:07.679Z

That abbrivation stands for Digital Combat Simulator right?

I guess technically it is? I’m hesitant to put it on the list from my pacifists views but for completeness it should probably be on the list. Does anybody use this for drone development?

One thing that came out of the discussion was that we also need to think about making a clear definition of what is called a simulator and what is not… or subelements of it. think of other names for it as the word ‘simulation’ is extremely broad and confuses a lot of people too.

KimMcG · 2023-10-16T07:28:21.838Z

Also 2 simulators/models that people mentioned.

The MAVlab UAV toolbox: UAV Toolbox Documentation - MathWorks Nordic
Drake modeling and kinematics model: Drake: Model-Based Design and Verification for Robotics (mit.edu)

We should add those to the list as well.

RFRIEDM · 2023-11-07T22:29:25.678Z

What about O3DE? This is a pretty impressive demo for Cesium which seems to provide photorealistic terrain and urban buildings which is applicable for outdoor UAV’s.

Cesium

Cesium for O3DE

Cesium for O3DE enables real world 3D data in Open 3D Engine (O3DE), allowing developers to create rich, full-scale, high-accuracy global simulations and experiences.

KimMcG · 2023-11-08T14:07:29.703Z

That is interesting too. Anybody that used it for UAVS so far?

KimMcG · 2023-11-08T14:23:31.860Z

Also a little announcement, I’ve helped co-authoring a IEEE submitted paper which is a survey of UAV simulations based on the Aerial simulation workshop I co-organized for ICRA 2023. It has been submitted to IEEE for possible publication but it is now available already on the ArXiv:

‘Survey of Simulators for Aerial Robots’ by Dimmig et al (2023)

arXiv.org

Survey of Simulators for Aerial Robots

Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) research faces challenges with safety, scalability, costs, and ecological impact when conducting hardware testing. High-fidelity simulators offer a vital solution by replicating real-world conditions to enable the...

Hope this paper will useful for anyone swimming the vast aerial simulation ocean!

RFRIEDM · 2023-11-08T14:31:36.303Z

I haven’t found any evidence but see no reason it couldn’t be. Maybe it’s lacking physics for flight dynamics.

KimMcG · 2023-11-08T16:02:44.847Z

Also, it seems that AirSim seems to have some kind of fork or wrapper called AirGen:

GitHub

Announcing AirGen - the next generation aerial robotics simulator ·...

AirGen The original creators of AirSim are proud to present AirGen - the next generation of aerial robotics simulation that is focused on enabling aerial robot intelligence through large-scale data...

It seems to be limited to academics for free access so technically not open source anymore (which they can since it is MIT)