Rapid Development of a Mobile Robot Simulation Environment

Robotics simulation provides many advantages during the development of an intelligent ground vehicle (IGV) such as testing the software components in varying scenarios without requiring a complete physical robot. This paper discusses a 3D simulation environment created using rapid application development and the Unity game engine to enable testing during a mobile robotics competition. Our experience shows that the simulation environment contributed greatly to the development of software for the competition. The simulator also contributed to the hardware development of the robot.