The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958 after the launch of Sputnik during the Cold War Era. Established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the goal of the organization was and is still to maintain technological superiority of the U.S. military. Although the primary objective is military applications, DARPA is responsible for creating technology that is used by civilians not only in this country, but around the world – ARPANET, the earliest predecessor of the Internet, being one of them. The latest contribution by the organization to civilians is making Gazebo, a simulation software, available as a free download for Linux and Ubuntu users – with Windows and OSX versions to follow.
Gazebo was made available for free after the Virtual Robotics Challenge portion of the DARPA Robotics Challenge concluded. The organization made it available to the general public, along with a virtual model of the Atlas humanoid robot, as well as all the challenges used in the event to motivate engineers and others in their pursuit of robotics.
DARPA requested the developer of Gazebo, Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF), to revamp the application to make it user-friendly. More developments and features will be made over the next 18 months to include multiple operating systems and platforms.
Gazebo is a multi-robot simulator for outdoor environments in a three-dimensional world with a population of robots, objects and sensors. The platform is able to generate plausible interactions between physical objects and realistic sensor feedback with an accurate simulation of rigid-body physics.
It was originally created by Dr. Andrew Howard and his student Nate Koenig at the University of Southern California as high-fidelity simulator for robots in outdoor environments.
While the concept of robotics is appealing to a wide group of students, the cost of implementing physical robots is too expensive for most learning institutions. This application is able to give students and others a platform for research and design for robots and robotic application in a virtual world.
The beauty of applications such as Gazebo is that they give students in many parts of the world an opportunity to explore every possibility, including going into the field of robotics. The contribution DARPA makes to our military and civilian life has been and will continue to be invaluable.
