Quick Step Guide

In order to download, compile and start the simulation environment, run the following commands.

Caution: The following dependencies need to be installed on Ubuntu, in order to successfully run the script:

# General
sudo apt-get install tmux
# SUMO
sudo apt-get install -q=2 make g++ libxerces-c-dev libfox-1.6-dev automake libtool
# SpeedDreams 2
sudo apt-get install -q=2 make cmake g++ \
alsa-base alsa-utils pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils \
libopenscenegraph-dev libsdl2-dev libexpat1-dev libjpeg9-dev \
libplib-dev libopenal-dev libvorbis-dev libpng12-dev \
libenet-dev libboost-all-dev protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev
# SimCoupler
sudo apt-get install -q=2 make cmake g++ \
libboost-all-dev protobuf-compiler libprotobuf-dev

# clone the testbed repository
git clone https://github.com/argos-research/testbed.git
# change directory to testbed
cd testbed
# checkout the simcoupler branch
git checkout simcoupler
# change directory to startup-scripts
cd startup-scripts
# run the shell script
./sim_env.sh

File Structure

+-- src
|   +-- main.cc
|   +-- sd2.cc
|   +-- sumo.cc
|   +-- ...
+-- inc
|   +-- master_sim.hh
|   +-- sd2.hh
|   +-- sumo.hh
|   +-- ...
+-- protobuf-messages
+-- CMakeLists.txt

The src directory contains all modules of the SimCoupler and the loop itself. If you want to add additional modules, just add them to the src directory. To add them to the loop, you need to change the main.cc file, which should only contain a minimum of code. The protobuf-messages submodule contains all message definitions exchanged by the SimCoupler.

Compilation

The SimCoupler can be compiled by issuing the following commands in the directory of the SimCoupler:

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake ../
make -j

Dependencies

To run the simulation, a few repositories are needed

General

Independent of the choice of the simulators you are using, you need two repositories for the simulation:

  • SimCoupler: The simulation coupler (SimCoupler) contains code for the main simulation loop.
  • protobuf-messages: This repository contains the definition of all protobuf messages.

Simulators

In our case there are currently two scenarios available:

Autonomous driving

For the autonomous driving scenario currently two simulators are used and are needed for the simulation:

  • SD2: SpeedDreams2 (SD2) is our main simulator and performs the simulation steps.
  • SUMO: SUMO provides a top-down view on the simulation and is planned to be used as a middleware for the Veins simulator.

SUMO provides its own API, which only allows one client at a time. We therefore wrote a Proxy to allow multiple connections to it, which is accessible via the TraCI-Proxy repository and will also be used by the SimCoupler.

Robotics

For the robotics scenario the V-REP simulator is used. By now no additional simulators are used by this scenario.

Network connections

In order to work the SimCoupler opens a few Sockets and/or connects to a few sockets.

In the current state the SimCoupler opens the following sockets:

  • 127.0.0.1:9000 for SpeedDreams2 (SD2)

Additionally the SimCoupler connects to the following sockets:

  • 127.0.0.1:2002 for TraCI-Proxy (SUMO)

Changes to addresses need to be done in the source code for now.

Startup-Routine

In order to start the SimCoupler, a few programs need to be started in order:

For the autonomous driving scenario:

  1. SUMO
  2. TraCI-Proxy
  3. SimCoupler
  4. SD2

Program Flow

As an example, the flow for the autonomous driving scenario:

  1. SD2 module is started:
    • opens a socket for a SD2 connection
    • waits for SD2 to transmit setup information (i.e. track)
  2. SUMO module is started:
    • connects to the TraCI-Proxy
  3. Now a loop is started:
    • SD2: perform simulation step and receive new simulation state
    • SUMO: perform simulation step and transmit information via TraCI-Proxy to SUMO

This loop can be easily changed to run a different main simulator and add additional simulators to the coupler.

Open points

  • S/A VMs are not integrated into the SimCoupler
  • Logging routine is missing
Tags: development