Title: Quantifying the Reality Gap in Robotic Manipulation Tasks,
Abstract: We quantify the accuracy of various simulators compared to a real world
robotic reaching and interaction task. Simulators are used in robotics to
design solutions for real world hardware without the need for physical access.
The `reality gap' prevents solutions developed or learnt in simulation from
performing well, or at at all, when transferred to real-world hardware. Making
use of a Kinova robotic manipulator and a motion capture system, we record a
ground truth enabling comparisons with various simulators, and present
quantitative data for various manipulation-oriented robotic tasks. We show the
relative strengths and weaknesses of numerous contemporary simulators,
highlighting areas of significant discrepancy, and assisting researchers in the
field in their selection of appropriate simulators for their use cases. All
code and parameter listings are publicly available from:
this https URL .