CORNET 2.0: A Co-Simulation Middleware for Robot Networks

TL;DR

CORNET 2.0 is a co-simulation middleware that integrates physical robot interactions and network communications, enabling effective design and testing of multi-robot systems.

Contribution

It extends existing simulation tools to seamlessly synchronize robot autonomy and network behavior, facilitating co-design and migration to real platforms.

Findings

Integrated simulation of robot autonomy and network protocols.

Supports seamless migration from simulation to real robots.

Enhances multi-robot system development with synchronized cyber-physical modeling.

Abstract

We present a networked co-simulation framework for multi-robot systems applications. We require a simulation framework that captures both physical interactions and communications aspects to effectively design such complex systems. This is necessary to co-design the multi-robots' autonomy logic and the communication protocols. The proposed framework extends existing tools to simulate the robot's autonomy and network-related aspects. We have used Gazebo with ROS/ROS2 to develop the autonomy logic for robots and mininet-WiFi as the network simulator to capture the cyber-physical systems properties of the multi-robot system. This framework addresses the need to seamlessly integrate the two simulation environments by synchronizing mobility and time, allowing for easy migration of the algorithms to real platforms. The framework supports container-based virtualization and extends a generic robotic framework by decoupling the data plane and control plane.