Robot One: A cross-platform and multi-language simulator developed for educational robotics

Despite the rapid development of the robotics' field, overall the equipment's employed are still expensive or even inaccessible, therefore the ground truth and precise tests must be taken in simulation. Although several simulators are available, in most cases these tools are complicated and require a steep learning curve. This paper presents the development of a robotic simulator which is cross-platform, lightweight, language agnostic, able to simulate differential mobile robots. This simulator takes into account environmental and robot variables, such as constructive and random errors, in a simple way of configuring and accessing. Thus the effort is applied in the required task instead of simulation construction, providing a fast and accurate simulator. The simulator follows the cross-platform paradigm and is compatible with several programming languages through a external binding system. Some tests were performed using path planning algorithms to evaluate the simulator and have shown positive results.