Raven 2 Robot with V-REP and Unity3D

Requirements

For Users

• V-REP
• Docker (To easily run ROS)

For Contributors

• V-REP
• Unity: To build the visualization you must have Unity3D installed (Currently Windows and Mac are officially supported. For use in Linux install the experimentation software as described in here)
• Docker (To easily run ROS)

Instructions

For Users

For Contributors

The following instructions are for building and running the project from scratch.

Why V-REP

V-REP is used in this project for most of the simulation calculations (inverse kinematics, path planning, sensors, etc.). V-REP is:

• Fully featured Robotics simulation software
• Cross platform support: Windows, Linux, MacOS (key difference from Gazebo)
• Standalone: ROS is not required
• Good interoperability: ROS Interface, RemoteAPI, Support for Python, MATLAB, C++ and others

Why Unity3D

Unity3D is chosen for the visualization of the robotic simulations (instead of V-REP) for the following reasons:

• Superior graphics and photorealism
• Multi platform support: Windows, Linux, MacOS as well as WebGL
• More flexibility in terms of physics engines. This is especially useful for medical simulations where it is important to visualize and manipulate non-rigid objects. (TODO: Integration with SOFA framework)
• Support for VR & AR: This is very important for the field of surgery robotics!

References

• ROS# https://github.com/siemens/ros-sharp
• Raven2 https://github.com/rll/raven_2
• vrep-raven2 https://github.com/karadalex/vrep-raven2