Semester 2 has started today — with a massive power outage. We had to cancel lectures and meetings and send students home. If they already had our new simulation system, they could have worked from home instead …

A team of six Computer Science students is now working on our new robot simulator, called EyeSim-VR. It should run on Windows, Mac-OS and Linux, and the appendix “VR” indicates that it should also allow immersive viewing using VR platforms such as the Oculus Rift.

An alpha-version of the simulator is being used for testing of individual features, while students are still working on its implementation. So far we have only a single robot type and a single driving environment, but we should get more and more features on a weekly basis. The whole system is based on Unity, which gives us executability on a range of different platforms, a 3D-physics game engine, as well as a VR interface.

We hope to use the system for the first lab in GENG5508 Robotics, which starts in week 5 — so we have a tight deadline!