{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,11]],"date-time":"2026-04-11T04:16:56Z","timestamp":1775881016604,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":76,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"4","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2014,7,15]],"date-time":"2014-07-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1405382400000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/terms"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Robotica"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2016,4]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>SUMMARY<\/jats:title><jats:p>In robotics, simulation has become an essential tool for research, education, and design purposes. Various software tools for mobile robot simulation have been developed and have reached different levels of maturity in recent years. This paper presents a general survey of mobile robot simulation tools and discusses qualitative and quantitative aspects of selection of four major simulators publicly available at no cost: Carmen, Player-Stage-Gazebo, Open Dynamics Engine, and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. The comparison of the simulators is aimed at establishing the range of applications for which these are best suited as well as their accuracy for certain simulation tasks. The simulators chosen for detailed comparison were selected considering their level of maturity, modularity, and popularity among engineers and researchers. The qualitative comparison included a discussion of relevant features. The quantitative analysis entailed the development of a detailed dynamical model of a mobile robot on a road with varying slope. This model was used as benchmark to compare the accuracy of each simulator. The validity of the simulated results was also contrasted against measurements obtained from experiments with a real robot. This research and analysis should be very valuable to educators, engineers, and researchers who are always seeking adequate tools for simulating autonomous mobile robots.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/s0263574714001866","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2014,7,15]],"date-time":"2014-07-15T08:48:50Z","timestamp":1405414130000},"page":"791-822","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":20,"title":["Survey and comparative study of free simulation software for mobile robots"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"34","author":[{"given":"M.","family":"Torres-Torriti","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"T.","family":"Arredondo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"P.","family":"Castillo-Pizarro","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2014,7,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"E. Folgado , M. Rinc\u00f3n , J. R. \u00c1lvarez and J. Mira , \u201cA Multi-Robot Surveillance System Simulated in Gazebo,\u201d In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Work-conference on Nature-Inspired Problem-Solving Methods in Knowledge Engineering: Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation, Part II IWINAC '07) (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, 2007) pp. 202\u2013211.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-73055-2_22"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4899-7560-7"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/100.486658"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref25","volume-title":"Professional Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio","author":"Johns","year":"2008"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref52","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"K. Yamane and Y. Nakamura , \u201cStable Penalty-Based Model of Frictional Contacts,\u201d Proceedings of 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2006), Orlando, FL, USA (May 15\u201319, 2006) pp. 1904\u20131909.","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.2006.1641984"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref59","unstructured":"Cogmation robotics. Available at: http:\/\/www.cogmation.com\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"I. G. Daza , L. M. B. Pascual , M. A. S. Vazquez , E. L. Guillen , R. B. Navarro and L. B. Vazquez , \u201cLow Level Control in States Space for the Pioneer,\u201d In: Proceedings of the the 2005 International Conference on Computer as a Tool (EUROCON 2005), Vol. 1, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro (Nov. 21\u201324, 2005) pp. 322\u2013325. IEEE, New Jersey, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/EURCON.2005.1629926"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref46","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1137\/S0036144599360110"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref14","volume-title":"The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology","author":"Eberly","year":"2010"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref55","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/S026357470800489X"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"R. B. Rusu , A. Holzbach , R. Diankov , G. Bradski and M. Beetz , \u201cPerception for Mobile Manipulation and Grasping Using Active Stereo,\u201d Proceedings of the 9th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2009, Paris, France (Dec. 7\u20139, 2009) pp. 632\u2013638.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICHR.2009.5379597"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"P. Castillo-Pizarro , T. Arredondo-Vidal and M. Torres-Torriti , \u201cIntroductory Survey to Open-Source Mobile Robot Simulation Software,\u201d Proceedings of the 2010 Latin American Robotics Symposium and Intelligent Robotic Meeting (LARS), Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil (Oct. 2010) pp. 150\u2013155.","DOI":"10.1109\/LARS.2010.19"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref42","unstructured":"J. Ros , R. Yoldi , A. Plaza and X. Iriarte , \u201cReal-time Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation of a Hexaglide-Type Parallel Manipulator on a Real Machine Controller,\u201d In: ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Multibody Dynamics 2011 ( J. C. Samin and P. Fisette , eds.), Brussels, Belgium (European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS), 2011) pp. 1\u201311."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/MRA.2004.1371616"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1023\/A:1008292328909"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref66","unstructured":"OpenRAVE. Available at: http:\/\/openrave.org\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref74","unstructured":"USARSim. Available at: http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/usarsim\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref68","unstructured":"OpenSim. Available at: http:\/\/opensimulator.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"A. Rahim , J. Teo and A. Saudi , \u201cAn Empirical Comparison of Code Size Limit in Auto-Constructive Artificial Life,\u201d Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand (Jun. 7\u20139, 2006) pp. 1\u20136.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICCIS.2006.252308"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref54","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J. C. Zagal , J. Ruiz-Del-Solar and P. Vallejos , \u201cBack to Reality: Crossing the Reality Gap in Evolutionary Robotics,\u201d Proceedings of the 5th IFAC Symposium on Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles, Lisbon, Portugal (Jul. 5\u20137, 2004) pp. 1\u20139.","DOI":"10.1016\/S1474-6670(17)32084-0"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TBME.2007.901024"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"108","DOI":"10.1002\/cae.20202","article-title":"Teaching robotics with a reconfigurable 3D multibody dynamics simulator","volume":"18","author":"Chiang","year":"2010","journal-title":"Comput. Appl. Eng. Educ."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref26","unstructured":"J. Klein , \u201cBreve: A 3D Environment for the Simulation of Decentralized Systems and Artificial Life,\u201d Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Artificial Life (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002), pp. 329\u2013334."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"K. Kumar and P. Singh Reel, \u201cAnalysis of Contemporary Robotics Simulators,\u201d Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Trends in Electrical and Computer Technology (ICETECT), 2011, Tamil Nadu, India (Mar. 23\u201324, 2011) pp. 661\u2013665.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICETECT.2011.5760200"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref65","unstructured":"ODE: Open Dynamics Engine. Available at: http:\/\/www.ode.org\/, http:\/\/opende.sourceforge.net\/wiki\/index.php\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref50","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1023\/A:1014491204982"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-1-4612-2600-0"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-17319-6_7"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"A. Harris and J. M. Conrad , \u201cSurvey of Popular Robotics Simulators, Frameworks, and Toolkits,\u201d Proceedings of IEEE SoutheastCon, 2011, Nashville, TN, USA (Mar. 17\u201320, 2011) pp. 243\u2013249.","DOI":"10.1109\/SECON.2011.5752942"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J. D. Cohen , M. C. Lin , D. Manocha and M. Ponamgi , \u201cI-COLLIDE: Qn Interactive and Exact Collision Detection System for Large-Scale Environments,\u201d Proceedings of the 1995 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (I3D '95), Monterey, CA, USA (Apr. 9\u201312, 1995) pp. 189\u2013196.","DOI":"10.1145\/199404.199437"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref49","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1115\/1.3139699"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref27","unstructured":"K. Kobayashi , Y. Uchida and K. Watanabe , \u201cA Study of Battle Strategy for the Robocode,\u201d In: Proceedings of the SICE 2003 Annual Conference, Vol. 3, Fukui, Japan (Aug. 4\u20136, 2003) pp. 3373\u20133376. IEEE, New Jersey, USA."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref56","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.matcom.2008.02.017"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref12","unstructured":"R. Diankov and J. Kuffner , \u201cOpenrave: A Planning Architecture for Autonomous Robotics,\u201d Technical Report CMU-RI-TR-08-34, Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (Jul. 2008)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref15","article-title":"Robotics middleware: A comprehensive literature survey and attribute-based bibliography","volume":"2012","author":"Elkady","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Robot."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref22","unstructured":"E. J. Huag , Computer-Aided Kinematics and Dynamics of Mechanical Systems: Basic Methods, Allyn and Bacon Series in Engineering (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1989)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref16","unstructured":"K. Erleben , \u201cModule-Based Design for Rigid Body Simulators,\u201d Technical Report DIKU 02\/06, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2002)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1017\/S0263574798000617"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref20","unstructured":"B. P. Gerkey , R. T. Vaughan and A. Howard , \u201cThe Player\/Stage Project: Tools for Multi-Robot and Distributed Sensor Systems,\u201d Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, Coimbra, Portugal (Jun. 30\u2013Jul. 3, 2003) pp. 317\u2013323."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref23","first-page":"831","volume-title":"SAB, Lecture Notes in Computer Science","author":"Hugues","year":"2006"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-0-387-74244-1"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref28","unstructured":"Z. Kova\u010di\u0107 , S. Bogdan , K. Petrinec , T. Reichenbach and M. Pun\u010dec , \u201cLeonardo \u2013 The Off-line Programming Tool for Robotized Plants,\u201d Proceedings of the 9th Mediterranean Conference on Control and Automation, Jun. 27\u201329, Dubrovnik, Croatia (Jun. 2001)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"B. Magyar , Z. Forhecz and P. Korondi , \u201cDeveloping an Efficient Mobile Robot Control Algorithm in the Webots Simulation Environment,\u201d In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, 2003, Vol. 1, Maribor, Slovenia (Dec. 10\u201312, 2003) pp. 179\u2013184.","DOI":"10.1109\/ICIT.2003.1290264"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/100.511779"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref32","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/3468.798060"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref63","unstructured":"JDE project. Available at: http:\/\/jderobot.org\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"S. McMillan , D. E. Orin and R. B. McGhee , \u201cObject-oriented Design of a Dynamic Simulation for Underwater Robotic Vehicles,\u201d Proceedings of the 1995 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1995, Vol. 2, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan (May 21\u201327, 1995) pp. 1886\u20131893.","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.1995.525541"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"E. Rohmer , S. P. N. Singh and M. Freese , \u201cV-REP: A Versatile and Scalable Robot Simulation Framework,\u201d Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Tokyo, Japan, November 3\u20137, 2013 (Nov. 2013) pp. 1321\u20131326.","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2013.6696520"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref64","unstructured":"Moby. Available at: http:\/\/physsim.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/100.296449"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref67","unstructured":"OpenRDK. Available at: http:\/\/openrdk.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref48","first-page":"267","volume-title":"Software Engineering for Experimental Robotics","author":"Vaughan","year":"2006"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref39","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/s10015-008-0508-6"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref40","unstructured":"S. J. Rodenbaugh and D. E. Orin , \u201cRobotbuilder User's Guide, ver. 1.0.,\u201d Technical Report, Department of Electrical Engineering (The Ohio State University, Ohio, May 2003)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref44","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TSMCB.2003.818434"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"D. Stewart and J. C. Trinkle , \u201cAn Implicit Time-Stepping Scheme for Rigid Body Dynamics with Coulomb Friction,\u201d In: Proceedings of the ICRA IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2000, Vol. 1, San Francisco, CA, USA (Apr. 24\u201328, 2000) pp. 162\u2013169. IEEE, New Jersey, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.2000.844054"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref51","volume-title":"Theory of Ground Vehicles","author":"Wong","year":"2008"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref53","first-page":"65","article-title":"Comparing passive walker simulators in MATLAB and ADAMS","volume":"44","author":"Ylikorpi","year":"2011","journal-title":"J. Struct. Mech."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref57","unstructured":"anyKode Marilou. Available at: http:\/\/www.anykode.com\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref58","unstructured":"Carmen: Carnegie Mellon Robot Navigation Toolkit. Available at: http:\/\/carmen.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref60","unstructured":"Energid. Available at: http:\/\/www.energid.com\/actin-simulation-advantages.htm (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref61","unstructured":"EyerSim. Available at: http:\/\/robotics.ee.uwa.edu.au\/eyebot\/doc\/sim\/sim.html (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"D. Baraff , \u201cLinear-Time Dynamics Using Lagrange Multipliers,\u201d Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH '96), New Orleans, LA, USA (Aug. 4\u20139, 1996) pp. 137\u2013146.","DOI":"10.1145\/237170.237226"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref62","unstructured":"M. Torers-Torriti , T. Arredondo and P. Castillo-Pizarro , Installation instructions for Carmen, Gazebo and Open Dynamics Engine. Available at: http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/apps\/mediawiki\/arsproject\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref69","unstructured":"The Orocos Project. Available at: http:\/\/www.orocos.org\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref75","unstructured":"V-REP. Available at: http:\/\/www.v-rep.eu\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref35","unstructured":"B. V. Mirtich , Impulse-Based Dynamic Simulation of Rigid Body Systems Ph.D. Thesis (University of California, Berkeley, CA, Dec. 1996)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref70","unstructured":"PSG: Player-Stage-Gazebo. Available at: http:\/\/playerstage.sourceforge.net\/, http:\/\/gazebosim.org\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref71","unstructured":"Robocode. Available at: http:\/\/robocode.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref72","unstructured":"ROS. Available at: http:\/\/www.ros.org\/wiki\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref73","unstructured":"Simbad. Available at: http:\/\/simbad.sourceforge.net\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref76","unstructured":"G. Metta , P. Fitzpatrick and L. Natal , YARP: Yet another robot platform. http:\/\/eris.liralab.it\/yarp\/ (accessed July 2, 2014)."},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1115\/1.2791938"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref36","volume-title":"A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation","author":"Murray","year":"1994"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref47","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"M. Tang , D. Manocha , J. Lin and R. Tong , \u201cCollision-streams: Fast GPU-based Collision Detection for Deformable Models,\u201d Proceedings of the Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D '11), San Francisco, CA, USA (Feb. 18\u201320, 2011) pp. 63\u201370.","DOI":"10.1145\/1944745.1944756"},{"key":"S0263574714001866_ref3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"S. Carpin , M. Lewis , J. Wang , S. Balakirsky and C. Scrapper , \u201cUSARSim: A Robot Simulator for Research and Education,\u201d Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2007, Roma, Italy (Apr. 10\u201314, 2007) pp. 1400\u20131405.","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.2007.363180"}],"container-title":["Robotica"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/S0263574714001866","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,5,3]],"date-time":"2025-05-03T20:24:44Z","timestamp":1746303884000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/S0263574714001866\/type\/journal_article"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2014,7,15]]},"references-count":76,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2016,4]]}},"alternative-id":["S0263574714001866"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/s0263574714001866","relation":{},"ISSN":["0263-5747","1469-8668"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0263-5747","type":"print"},{"value":"1469-8668","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2014,7,15]]}}}