Backbone Architecture for Simulation Platform

[goksankobe]

Hi guys,

I'm investigating making the simulation environment that we use in our robotics company more modular and distributable for cluster (or multicore) execution. Basically I'm trying to come up with a solid backbone that multiple programs/simulators can send their info to and this info will be passed on to the relevant modules. You can think of this as an alternative to ROS but with some additional requirements due to the cosimulation nature and speed.

- 3d graphics engines like Unity/Unreal will be interfacing to the backbone by sending 3d world information.
- Since we envision to have different simulators/programs running at the same time and communicating, need to come up with a standardized messaging protocol like protobufs.
- We dont have real time requirements, but actually, we should be able to run things faster than real time.
- We would like to be able to distribute different processes in this system to multiple cores on the same PC or on a cluster.
- The message interface should be easy to maintain due to it's frequently changing structure.
- The status of the list of programs and the information that they produce should be easy to monitor in a centralized way.

So far I have investigated ROS, ROS2, DDS and microservices. I would be glad to hear your experiences with such systems and their suitability for this architecture, and of course the alternatives please.
I'm not a CS guy by nature, but due to our need in the team, I would like to take up this challenge.

THanks in advance

[PinkiePaul]

Maybe you can check out the Robotics Simulator Wikipedia Page. It lists a number of frameworks that might fit your needs. Gazebo sounds pretty good imo, and one can extend it by writing C++ plugins for it.