Interfacing Robotics Simulator with FPGA

[alvinli6]

Hello,

I'm fairly new to interacting with people on the GitHub community, apologies if this is the wrong spot to post. I am trying to interface any robotics simulator with an FPGA and am wondering how to go about doing this. I've tried OpenAI's MuJoCo, however, it doesn't seem like that can easily be installed on the FPGA. The general idea is I am trying to pass vectors between a robotics simulator and an FPGA design. Would anyone be able to help me with this? Thank you!

[jmplaza]

Hi @alvinli6 ,

yes, this is the right spot to post :-)

We are actively working on the integration of a Robotics Simulator (Gazebo) with FPGA designs (simulated with Verilator). All open source software. The general idea is to program the "robot brain" with Verilog and connect it to the "robot body" (= sensors and actuators). ROS is used to interact with Gazebo simulator.

We have connected a simulated camera to a Verilog image processing FPGA design. And a real camera to the same image processing FPGA design.

We have also a working prototype with a mobile wheeled robot, endowed with a camera, and the follow-person application. Here you can see the demo video. The robot sensors (the camera) and the robot actuators (the motors) are connected to the robot brain.

But the repository is still messy, some refactoring and betatesting is needed. You are kindly invited to contribute here, your help on betatesting it and providing feedback would be a useful contribution.