This video abstract discusses the details of the implementation of a Packbot operator control unit (OCU) using Apple's official iPhone SDK.

This paper presents the results from experiments validating the physics and environmental accuracy of a new robot simulation environment, the search and rescue game environment (SARGE), which is the foundation for series of robot-operator training games. An ATRV-Jr. outfitted with a SICK laser, GPS, and compass was used both in the real-world and in a simulated environment modeled after the real-world testing location in a simulated anomaly detection task. The ARTV-Jr., controlled by the Distributed Field Robotics Architecture, navigated through a series of waypoints in the environment. The simulated ATRV-Jr. matched the actions of the real ATRV-Jr. in both velocity and path similarity within 0.08 m/s and 0.7 m respectively.

This report presents a survey of computer based simulators for unmanned vehicles. The simulators examined cover a wide spectrum of vehicles including unmanned aerial vehicles, both full scale and micro size; unmanned surface and subsurface vehicles; and unmanned ground vehicles. The majority of simulators use simple numerical simulation and simplistic visualization using custom OpenGL code. An emerging trend is to used modified commercial game engines for physical simulation and visualization. The game engines that are commercially available today are capable of physical simulations providing basic physical properties and interactions between objects. Newer and/or specialized engines such as the flight simulator X-Plane or Ageia PhysX and Havok physics engines, are capable of simulating more complex physical interactions between objects. Researchers in need of a simulator have a choice of using game engines or available open source and commercially available simulators, allowing resources to be focused on research instead of building a new simulator. We conclude that it is no longer necessary to build a new simulator from scratch.