MEbots: Integrating a RISC-V Virtual Platform with a Robotic Simulator for Energy-aware Design

2025-05-22

AI Summary

Existing virtual platforms (VPs) lack environmental interaction capabilities, while robotic simulators omit precise timing and power modeling—hindering full-stack co-verification for low-power autonomous systems. This paper introduces the first open-source co-simulation framework that tightly integrates the MESSY RISC-V virtual platform with the Webots robot simulator. Leveraging a hybrid C++/Python interface and a real-time power–environment coupling mechanism, it enables task-level, energy-aware, end-to-end closed-loop simulation. The framework bridges a critical capability gap by unifying high-fidelity power/timing modeling with dynamic physical environment interaction—previously unsupported in either VPs or robotics simulators. It facilitates quantitative evaluation and optimization of dynamic power management strategies under realistic operational scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate significantly improved design efficiency and verification completeness for low-power autonomous systems.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data generation and simulation
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Virtual Platforms (VPs) enable early software validation of autonomous systems' electronics, reducing costs and time-to-market. While many VPs support both functional and non-functional simulation (e.g., timing, power), they lack the capability of simulating the environment in which the system operates. In contrast, robotics simulators lack accurate timing and power features. This twofold shortcoming limits the effectiveness of the design flow, as the designer can not fully evaluate the features of the solution under development. This paper presents a novel, fully open-source framework bridging this gap by integrating a robotics simulator (Webots) with a VP for RISC-V-based systems (MESSY). The framework enables a holistic, mission-level, energy-aware co-simulation of electronics in their surrounding environment, streamlining the exploration of design configurations and advanced power management policies.

Problem

• Bridging gap between robotics simulators and Virtual Platforms
• Enabling energy-aware co-simulation for RISC-V systems
• Integrating environment simulation with functional power analysis

Innovation

• Integrates RISC-V Virtual Platform with robotic simulator
• Enables holistic energy-aware co-simulation of electronics
• Streamlines design configuration and power management