CyPhyHouse: A Programming, Simulation, and Deployment Toolchain for Heterogeneous Distributed Coordination

TL;DR

CyPhyHouse is a comprehensive toolchain that enables programming, simulation, and deployment of heterogeneous distributed robotic applications using a high-level language, streamlining development processes for mobile robots.

Contribution

It introduces a platform-independent middleware and a high-fidelity simulator for distributed mobile robotic applications, simplifying development without requiring controller or protocol expertise.

Findings

Effective in reducing development cycle times.

Successfully deployed on heterogeneous ground and aerial robots.

Supports scalable simulation of dozens of agents.

Abstract

Programming languages, libraries, and development tools have transformed the application development processes for mobile computing and machine learning. This paper introduces the CyPhyHouse - a toolchain that aims to provide similar programming, debugging, and deployment benefits for distributed mobile robotic applications. Users can develop hardware-agnostic, distributed applications using the high-level, event driven Koord programming language, without requiring expertise in controller design or distributed network protocols. The modular, platform-independent middleware of CyPhyHouse implements these functionalities using standard algorithms for path planning (RRT), control (MPC), mutual exclusion, etc. A high-fidelity, scalable, multi-threaded simulator for Koord applications is developed to simulate the same application code for dozens of heterogeneous agents. The same compiled code can also be deployed on heterogeneous mobile platforms. The effectiveness of CyPhyHouse in improving the design cycles is explicitly illustrated in a robotic testbed through development, simulation, and deployment of a distributed task allocation application on in-house ground and aerial vehicles.