High-fidelity Simulation of a Humanoid Robot Driving an E-scooter using Web technologies

Abstract

This paper proposes a versatile and extremely portable simulator and benchmark for the development of humanoid robots in highly dynamic environment. It is a proof of concept on the feasibility of using web technologies to develop flexible, efficient, and highly portable environment for robot development. The environment described in this paper models the driving test for scooters in Taiwan. A humanoid robot is controlling an E-scooter in the simulation. The simulator is built on web technologies and therefore does not require any complex installation of the software, in contrast to using the robotics operating system (ROS). Furthermore, the simulator engine runs complete in the browser and hence can be served from any of the free webhosting sites. The simulator features all functionality of a classic simulator such as a physics engine and 3D rendering. Furthermore, a client program can communicate with the simulation engine using websockets. This work was tested during the online FIRA RoboWorld Cup competition 2021 and proved popular amongst participants.