Software platforms, toolkits and APIs


Player/Stage/Gazebo


Purpose

The Player/Stage Project creates Free Software that enables research in robot and sensor systems. The Player robot server is probably the most widely used robot control interface in the world. Its simulation backends, Stage and Gazebo, are also very widely used. Released under the GNU General Public License, all code from the Player/Stage project is free to use, distribute and modify. Player/Stage is developed by an international team of robotics researchers and used at labs around the world.

Software

Player robot device interface

Player provides a network interface to a variety of robot and sensor hardware. Player's client/server model allows robot control programs to be written in any programming language and to run on any computer with a network connection to the robot. Player supports multiple concurrent client connections to devices, creating new possibilities for distributed and collaborative sensing and control. Player supports a wide variety of mobile robots and accessories. 

Stage multiple robot simulator

Stage simulates a population of mobile robots moving in and sensing a two-dimensional bitmapped environment. Various sensor models are provided, including sonar, scanning laser rangefinder, pan-tilt-zoom camera with color blob detection and odometry. Stage devices present a standard Player interface so few or no changes are required to move between simulation and hardware. Many controllers designed in Stage have been demonstrated to work on real robots.

Player and Stage run on Linux, Solaris, *BSD and Mac OSX (Darwin).

Gazebo 3D multiple robot simulator

Gazebo is a multi-robot simulator for outdoor environments. Like Stage, it is capable of simulating a population of robots, sensors and objects, but does so in a three-dimensional world. It generates both realistic sensor feedback and physically plausible interactions between objects (it includes an accurate simulation of rigid-body physics). Gazebo presents a standard Player interface in addition to its own native interface. Controllers written for the Stage simulator can generally be used with Gazebo without modification (and vise-versa).

Gazebo runs on Linux, and possibly elsewhere.