Webots

The Webots project started in 1996, initially developed by Dr. Olivier Michel at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, and then from 1998 by Cyberbotics Ltd. as a proprietary licensed software. Since December 2018, it has been released under the free and open-source Apache® 2 license.

Webots includes a large collection of freely modifiable models of robots, sensors, actuators, and objects. In addition, it is also possible to build new models from scratch or import them from 3D CAD software. When designing a robot model, the user specifies both the graphical and the physical properties of the objects. The graphical properties include the shape, dimensions, position and orientation, colors, and texture of the object. The physical properties include the mass, friction factor, as well as the spring and damping constants. Simple fluid dynamics is present in the software.

Webots uses a fork of the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) for detecting collisions and simulating rigid body dynamics. The ODE library allows one to accurately simulate the physical properties of objects, such as velocity, inertia, and friction.

Webots includes a set of sensors and actuators frequently used in robotic experiments, including lidars, radars, proximity sensors, light sensors, touch sensors, GPS, accelerometers, cameras, emitters and receivers, servo motors (rotational and linear), position and force sensor, LEDs, grippers, gyros, compass, IMU, and more.

Robot controller programs can be written outside of Webots in MATLAB and other languages (C, C++, Python, Java, ROS) using a simple API. For more information on the Webots integration with MATLAB, please see the associated documentation.

Webots offers the possibility to take screenshots and record simulations. Webots worlds are stored in cross-platform *.wbt files whose format is based on the VRML language. Users can interact with a running simulation by moving robots and other objects with the mouse. Webots can also stream a simulation on web browsers using WebGL™.

End users include academic researchers in robotics and AI to pursue research in robotics and AI, teachers in robotics and AI to teach robotics and AI, and industry researchers to design new robotics prototypes and products, explore ideas, and develop continuous integration systems in robotics development workflows.