title: A simple robot simulator which has automatic IR scanning for coordinates and simple state mapping
body: <p>I am currently doing a project for a post-grad agents paper. For my project I have an idea about extending anytime searches such as ARA* ADA* and DLite*. I want to test this idea by simulating it on a robot. I've been looking at different software for the past few nights and have had no luck. </p>
  
  <p>Ultimately I need something that has a robot which will have the following information available at all times and in a discrete fashion:</p>
  
  <p>Coordinates (x,y,z) 
  Velocity</p>
  
  <p>I also need the robot to have some way of gathering coordinates from its environment, such as having an IR scanner which will map x,y coordinates with (passable/impassible).</p>
  
  <p>Finally I'll need to be able to program in algorithms which will use the environment information in order to suggest which states to pass through in its path to a goal coordinate.</p>
  
  <p>My question is whether or not there is software which I can achieve all of this without too much effort. I wouldn't want to spend more than 7 nights programming this and Ideally I would like to have some visible results within a night or two.</p>
  
  <p>I have programmed a lot of heuristic search algorithms for my dissertation (i.e. Perimeter search, BiMaxf, BS*, A*, my own bidirectional search algorithm and also some front-to-front searches) All of which have been based on the 8/15-puzzle and can solve reasonably hard problems within a few seconds in Java. I'm comfortable using C languages or scripting ones, as all I'll be needing will be hashtables and priority queues for the ADTs.</p>
  
  <p>So is there any opensource software which I can achieve simulations with (in real time) with reasonable ease. If not, does creating my own simulator sound out of the question? If I were to do that, then it would most likely just be a 2D simulator which <em>knows</em> of its surrounds within a given radius... It would just be nice to do it on something already out there as the experiments wouldn't be (as) biased...</p>