ARS 0.3a1

Autonomous Robot Simulator (ARS), a physically-accurate open-source simulation suite for research and development of mobile manipulators

ARS is a physically-accurate open-source simulation suite for research and development of mobile manipulators and, in general, any multi-body system. It is modular, easy to learn and use, and can be a valuable tool in the process of robot design, in the development of control and reasoning algorithms, as well as in teaching and educational activities.

It will encompass a wide range of tools spanning from kinematics and dynamics simulation to robot interfacing and control.

The software is implemented in Python integrating the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) and the Visualization Toolkit (VTK).

Requirements

• Python 2.7 (developed with 2.7.3) http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.3/

• ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) 0.12 (from rev 1864 could work but is untested) with Python bindings http://sourceforge.net/projects/opende/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/arsproject/files/ODE/

• VTK (Visualization Toolkit) 5.8 (developed with 5.8.0 and used to be 5.2.1) with Python bindings http://www.vtk.org/VTK/resources/software.html https://sourceforge.net/projects/arsproject/files/VTK/

Documentation

The documentation is hosted at ReadTheDocs.org and it is generated dynamically after each commit to the repository.

License

This software is licensed under the OSI-approved “BSD License”. To avoid confusion with the original BSD license from 1990, the FSF refers to it as “Modified BSD License”. Other names include “New BSD”, “revised BSD”, “BSD-3”, or “3-clause BSD”.

See the included LICENSE.txt file.