simspark library README
Please see NEWS.
General Information
simspark is a physical simulation system. The primary purpose of
this system is to provide a *generic* simulator for different kinds
of simulations. In these simulations, agents can participate as
external processes. To create specific simulations, important parts
of the simulator are build as plugins that can be replaced for
different simulations. The plugins can be exchanged at runtime.
Things designed as plugins are for example parts of agents: agents
can be using different actuators or perceptors. Other plugins are
responsible for the simulator protocol or also for the rules of
specific simulations.
Simulations for this simulator can be constructed to a great part by
changing text files with no further recompilation. The basic simulator
concept was presented on the 2003 RoboCup Symposium in Padova [1].
If you installed simspark-0.x before, make sure to clean
the ~/.simspark/ directory prior to using the new version. Also
better remove the old installed libraries in /usr/local/lib/
simspark manually. Sorry for this inconvenience.
For scientific simulations, it is useful to be able to keep track of
the time used by different agents for thinking. A special plugin
makes it possible to use the simulator together with SPADES, a
middleware system for agent based simulations. SPADES was presented
on the 2002 RoboCup Symposium in Fukuoka [2] (SPADES itself is not
part of this package).
Package Overview
The different parts of this package are organized in different
directories as follows:
./lib The main simulator parts as libraries. The
simulator consists of these parts:
./lib/salt This library provides a collection of useful
general purpose classes. It contains mostly
math-and system-related functionality, such as a 3D
Vector class, a Matrix class, a file I/O wrapper
and an abstraction for loading/accessing shared
libraries.
./lib/zeitgeist The Zeitgeist library provides two major features.
It implements a mechanism to work with class
objects in C++. A class object is just a factory of
class instances. In addition to this mechanism, it
also implements an object hierarchy. This hierarchy
is essentially a virtual file system, where the
'directories' and 'files' are instances of C++
classes. These two concepts are quite intertwined
with each other, as class objects can also live
inside the object hierarchy. Objects within the
hierarchy are identified with a unique name. On top
of these two features, the Zeitgeist library also
provides three very important 'built-in' services.
Each basic service is usually represented by a
'server' class in our terminology. An instance of
such a class provides the service to other parts of
the system. The three services built into the
Zeitgeist library are the LogServer, the
FileServer, and the ScriptServer.
./lib/oxygen Oxygen is the actual engine which is used for the
simulation. It is implemented on top of the
Zeitgeist framework and provides a multitude of
different services to a client application. It
handles the physics aspect (PhysicsServer), the
geometry aspect (PhysicsServer) and the agent
aspect (AgentAspect, ControlAspect). Another
important part of this library is performing the
world simulation (SceneServer).
./lib/kerosin Kerosin handles the visualization aspect
(ImageServer, FontServer, OpenGLServer,
TextureServer, MaterialServer). The classes in the
library also provide basic interfaces for receiving
input in interactive simulations (InputServer) and
for playing sounds (SoundServer). Currently, it is
not used for the simulator.
./plugin directory containing plugins to extend the simulator
./data contains some common data files which can be used
for creating simulations using simspark
./test applications for testing different subsystems of the
simulator.
Literature:
[1] Marco Kögler and Oliver Obst. Simulation League: The Next Generation.
In Daniel Polani, Andrea Bonarini, Brett Browning, and Kazuo
Yoshida, editors, RoboCup 2003: Robot Soccer World Cup VII,
Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg, New York, 2004.
[2] Patrick Riley. MPADES: Middleware for Parallel Agent Discrete
Event Simulation. In Gal A. Kaminka, Pedro U. Lima, and Raul
Rojas, editors, RoboCup-2002: Robot Soccer World Cup VI, Lecture
Notes in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 162-178, Springer Verlag,
Berlin, 2003.
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Oliver Obst
Last modified: Thu Jan 29 10:57 IRDT 2009 (By Hedayat Vatankhah)
