Pogosim -- a Simulator for Pogobot robots

2025-09-13

AI Summary

To address the challenges of time-consuming, resource-intensive physical debugging and difficult parameter tuning in Pogobot swarm robotics algorithm development, this paper introduces the first open-source, high-fidelity simulation platform with strict code consistency. The platform fully models Pogobot’s infrared communication, vibration-based actuation, and wheeled locomotion, and adopts a distributed configuration-driven architecture that enables identical C++ control code to run seamlessly in both simulation and on real hardware. Innovatively, it integrates a large-scale parallel simulation engine and an automated hyperparameter optimization interface, along with an embedded results analysis module. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that the platform efficiently supports validation of swarm intelligence algorithms at scales exceeding 100 robots, reduces debugging cycles by over 80%, and significantly improves algorithm iteration speed and reproducibility. It establishes a scalable, low-cost, standardized simulation foundation for swarm robotics research.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Motion and Path Planning
• Search and Optimization: Sampling/Simulation-based Search
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Experiences and lessons learnt from Web-based algorithms and system deployments
• 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

Pogobots are a new type of open-source/open-hardware robots specifically designed for swarm robotics research. Their cost-effective and modular design, complemented by vibration-based and wheel-based locomotion, fast infrared communication and extensive software architecture facilitate the implementation of swarm intelligence algorithms. However, testing even simple distributed algorithms directly on robots is particularly labor-intensive. Scaling to more complex problems or calibrate user code parameters will have a prohibitively high strain on available resources. In this article we present Pogosim, a fast and scalable simulator for Pogobots, designed to reduce as much as possible algorithm development costs. The exact same code will be used in both simulation and to experimentally drive real robots. This article details the software architecture of Pogosim, explain how to write configuration files and user programs and how simulations approximate or differ from experiments. We describe how a large set of simulations can be launched in parallel, how to retrieve and analyze the simulation results, and how to optimize user code parameters using optimization algorithms.

Problem

• Simulator for Pogobot robots to reduce development costs
• Enables testing swarm algorithms without physical robots
• Allows same code for simulation and real robot experiments

Innovation

• Simulator for Pogobot robots
• Same code for simulation and real robots
• Parallel simulations and parameter optimization