Magician Simulator: From Simulation to Robot Teaming

This paper reports ongoing development of a realistic robot friendly simulator called Magician, addressing multiple problems in robot teaming, networking and communications, strategy development and operator training. The software package includes i) an environment simulator that provides multi phases of virtual urban environment, ii) simulated robots, for addressing the behavior of robots individually and as teams, iii) a strategy overlord unit that provides automated strategy selection for robots or teams of robots that best suits the situation in the dynamically changing field, and iv) a Human Machine Interface (HMI), used for visualizing the undergoing actions in the simulated field in addition to addressing robot-operator and operator-robot interactions. The focus of the paper is on the proposed strategies for robot teaming and the achieved experimental results.