MORSE
...in 20min

Presentation outline

• The MORSE project
• Simulating with MORSE
• MORSE Principles
  • Components
  • Inner loop
  • Interfaces
  • Serialization/Deserialization
• Human-Robot Interaction
• Massive simulations
• Still missing...

The MORSE project

• 100% open-source, permissive BSD-like license
• Release 1.0 in Feb. 2013
• ~30K LOC, mostly Python
• apt-get install morse-simulator

The MORSE community

• Academic project, baked by academics
• Initiated at LAAS-CNRS in 2009
• As of Apr. 2013, contributions by 12 institutions worldwide

The MORSE community

• 15 different individual contributors for the last releases
• > 630 commits in 2013 only
• > 130 users on morse-users
• ... + the Blender and Bullet communities!

Blender Game Engine + Bullet

$ morse create strands_sim

$ vim strands_sim/defaults.py

from random import uniform
from morse.builder import *

robot = BasePR2() # Bare PR2 model
robot.add_default_interface('ros') # control PR2 via ROS

for i in range(30):

    human = Human() # create human 'robot'
    human.translate(uniform(-5, 5), uniform(-5, 5))

    waypoint = Waypoint() # create actuator
    waypoint.add_interface('socket') # control via sockets
    human.append(waypoint)

env = Environment("office.blend") # load custom 3d model

$ morse run strands_sim

Remote control of humans

import pymorse  # ->  apt-get install python3-morse-simulator

with pymorse.Morse('localhost') as simu:

    simu.human_001.goto(uniform(-5, 5), uniform(-5, 5))
    # ...

MORSE Principles: Components

• MORSE simulations are made of components
• Base components are sensors, actuators or robots,
• Other components are interfaces, modifiers and overlays
• They are defined by a mandatory Python description,
• They optionally come with a (Blender) 3D mesh.

MORSE Principles: Inner loop

• 2 interactions modalities: datastreams and services,
• datastreams: published by MORSE for sensors, read for actuators,
• strong decoupling: components are not aware of surrounding interfaces/modifiers,
• modifiers alter the sensors/actuators data, typically to add noise,
• components' local data are exported/imported by external interfaces like sockets,
• services: RPC-style interaction, can be synchronous or asynchronous

MORSE Principles: Interfaces

• Generic: sockets, text,
• Specific to robotics: middlewares
  • 
  • 
  • GenoM/pocolibs
  • MOOS
• Mapping to interaction semantics: RPC-oriented or datastream-oriented
• Language bindings available for Python. Easy to develop for other languages through the socket interface.
• Simulation introspection possible through sockets interface

MORSE Principles: Serialization/Deserialization

• Generally speaking, each pair (component, interface) requires specific serialization/deserialization
• Practically, many cases are automated (eg, JSON on sockets)
• Specific marshalling functions can be provided to MORSE.

Multi-node

Still missing...

• Faster-than-realtime simulation
• Explicit timeline of events
• Formal support for logging/replay
• ...(you name it!)

Questions?

• One website: morse.openrobots.org
• Two mailing-lists: morse-users@laas.fr and morse-dev@laas.fr
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