Botsim.org

Copyright (c) 2010,2011,2015 Jeremie DECOCK (http://www.jdhp.org)

Description

Botsim.org is a robots simulator mainly used to test some biologically inspired algorithms (machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, reinforcement learning, ...).

Our motivations: generate in-silico original artificial organisms which can efficiently accomplish some given tasks (move, change their environment, survive, ...).

More precisely, Botsim.org was written to:

1. reproduce the experiments and the results of the Golem Project: optimize the morphology and control of robots in simulation via biologically inspired methods (evolutionary algorithms and neural networks) then materialize these self-generated organisms using a 3D printer;
2. improve control of existing robots by generating a large number of in-silico simulations;
3. reproduce some experiments on artificial curiosity by the Inria Flowers team.

Source code

Botsim.org source code can be retrieved on GitHub and JDHP.

Dependencies

Botsim.org requires the following libraries to be installed in your operating system:

• Boost::program_options to manage program options;
• Bullet Physics the open source physics engine used in Botsim.org;
• Eigen 3 a powerful C++ template library for linear algebra;
• Open Scene Graph 3.0 an open source high performance 3D graphics toolkit.

Debian 8 (Jessie) users should install the following Debian packages to compile and run Botsim.org:

• libboost-program-options-dev;
• libbullet-dev;
• libbullet-extras-dev;
• libeigen3-dev;
• libopenscenegraph-dev;
• build-essential;
• cmake;
• cmake-curses-gui.

Package names are roughly the same in other Debian releases as well as in the other Debian based systems (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ...).

Compile from sources

Botsim.org requires the cmake build system to compile.

So far, Botsim.org has been tested on Gnu/Linux systems only. Instructions for Microsoft Windows and MacOS X will come soon.

Ensure cmake, cmake-curses-gui and previously listed dependencies are installed on your system. Then open a unix terminal, go to the project's root directory and type:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
ccmake .

Then select the desired compilation targets and options then press 'c' and 'g'.

make

Build documentation

You can use doxygen to generate the Botsim API documentation.

Ensure doxygen is installed on your system and type doxygen from the Botsim.org project's root directory.

License

Botsim.org is distributed under the MIT License.