A Simulation System for Testing Robotic Navigation Based on CoppeliaSim and ROS

The navigation system is one of the most prominent and essential part of robotic autonomy. Along with more advanced navigation techniques are developed for autonomous robotics, it becomes more crucial to test the algorithms in simulation before applying them to real-world robotic platforms. This paper presents a combined simulation framework for testing robotic navigation algorithms, which is based on CoppeliaSim and ROS. An overview of each system is provided. Then, how the combined framework may be used for stand-alone simulated development is described in detail. Lastly, the robotic navigation experiment is conducted in a simulation scenario, where the robot is desired to navigate to a goal. The results of the experiment verify the effectiveness of the proposed simulation framework.