Combining realistic virtual environments with real-time sensor simulations for close-to-reality testing and development in eRobotics applications

Today, Virtual Reality (VR) simulation technology is a well-known field of engineering and widely applied in research and in the industry. In particular, the simulation of various sensors is an essential task in robotics-related contexts and part of many current multi-domain VR simulation systems. In this contribution, we present the novel concept of eRobotics, which combines rendering and simulation tasks to not only provide attractive virtual environments, but also helps to develop and test virtual prototypes with accurate, real-time optical sensor simulations like digital camera systems, laser range scanners (LiDAR) and time-of-flight (ToF) cameras, capable to meet real world conditions. Practical applications will demonstrate the advantages of these concepts in multiple robotics-related domains, which help to make the developed approaches and systems more robust before testing them in real world setups.