The platform- and hardware-in-the-loop simulator for multi-robot cooperation

This paper presents a platform- and hardware-in-the-loop simulator (PHILS), which was developed for the evaluation of cooperative performance of multiple autonomous robots and their testing in virtual environments. The simulator consists of computers each with a graphics processing unit (GPU), monitors, a network switch that links the computers, and a server-client simulation software system installed on the computers. The cooperative performance of multiple autonomous robots can be evaluated by linking computers each to be mounted on a robot to the network and running and testing autonomous robots in a virtual environment. Unlike the conventional hardware-in-the-loop simulators or multi-robot simulators, the primary advantage of the PHILS is that it can test cooperative autonomous robots and analyze their cooperative performance as well as hardware performance in a real-time virtual environment, enabling the implementation of synchronous and asynchronous communication strategies and the control of communication delay and loss.