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Simulation of e-puck path planning in webots

Article in International Journal of Applied Engineering Research · January 2016

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 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 19 (2016) pp. 9772-9775
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com

Simulation of e-puck path planning in Webots

Germán A. Vargas, Oscar G. Rubiano, Ricardo A. Castillo, Oscar F. Avilés, Mauricio F. Mauledoux

DAVINCI Research Group, Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract—This paper details simulation of an e-puck robot
platform running an A* path planning algorithm using the
Webots development environment. This is done as proof of
concept for use of both the algorithm and the Webots
simulation software in development of a modular robotics
platform. In AI terms, the e-puck is the only rational agent
within the test environment, which is fully observable,
stochastic, sequential and continuous. Furthermore, the robot’s
initial and goal positions, as well as obstacle positions, can be
modified by the software testing engineer at will. Results
indicate that the path planning algorithm requires modifications
in order to better handle diagonal motions.
Index Terms—Path planning, A* heuristic search, E-puck
mobile robot, Webots
all necessary components to test the chosen path planning
technique. Section 2 describes implementation of algorithms
for path planning and execution, environment monitoring and
communications. Lastly, sections 3 and 4 delve into simulation
results and corresponding conclusions.
TEST ENVIRONMENT
Since our primary interest is evaluation of the A* path
planning algorithm and the initial modular robot prototype was
not ready at time of writing this article, we chose the e-puck
mobile robot developed by EPFL university in Switzerland and
fully implemented within Webots to test the algorithm. Figure
1 shows a screen capture of the simulated environment in
Webots.

INTRODUCTION
As a key component in autonomous mobile robotics, path
planning has been a topic largely discussed during the past
years [1]. Application-specific variants such as robot con-
straints, optimal behavior, uncertainty and hybrid robots have
led to development of algorithms based on space properties
(grids [2], geometry [3], potential fields [4]), time properties
(intervals [5]) or perception (sampling [6]), among others.

When dealing with planning in two-dimensional environments,

complexity is significantly reduced and space-based algorithms
yield good results. Within the grid-based planning category,
heuristic search algorithms have had widespread use given their
performance speed which makes them optimal candidates for
mobile robots with limited computing power [7] [8] [9].
Among these, A* search is the most widely-known algorithm,
possessing several variants in order to deal with very large
search spaces when necessary.

As part of an ongoing research project in modular robotics, all

of the robot’s subsystems (electronics, hardware, controller,
etc.) must be simulated before assembly. Furthermore, our
current lack of a physical prototype restrains us to the use of
robotics development environments, where we must demon-
strate a proof of concept for the path planning subsystem. From
the wide array of available commercial solutions, Webots is
one of the eligible candidates given its inclusion of complete
models for common research robots such as Bioloid, DARwIn-
OP, Lego Mindstorms, FESTO Robotino and many more [10]
[11] [12] [13] [14] [15].
This article is divided as follows: the first section details the
creation of a task environment within Webots containing
Figure 1. Test environment developed in Webots
Due to the robot’s relatively small size and speed, we create
a one square meter work environment and allocate four
obstacles. Webots implements a “scene tree”, in which each of
the previous elements is represented as a node (an instance of a
predetermined class) with a set of properties. In other words, in
Webots all elements within the simulation must be represented
based on the Object-Oriented Programming paradigm.Given
that A* heuristic search is a grid-based algorithm, we overlay a
grid on top of the environment such that each of the generated
cells’ area is sufficient to allocate the e-puck robot within, thus
guaranteeing the planned path will not lead the robot through

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 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 19 (2016) pp. 9772-9775
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com

spaces where there is insufficient physical clearance for the motion or in-place rotation. The supervisor is in charge of both
robot to pass through. commanding and monitoring the e-puck’s path execution.

ALGORITHM IMPLEM ENTATION

Simulation of machine vision within robot development
environments is typically a complex, time-consuming task, as
noted in [16] [17] [18] [19]. In order to avoid said complexity
without sacrificing full environment observability, Webots
includes a supervisor node which acts as an overseer, capable
of reading any parameter visible within the scene tree, such as
the robot’s position and orientation, among others [20] [21].
Before execution of the path planning algorithm, a two-
dimensional array is defined to encode the previously overlaid
grid assigning arbitrary numerical values depending on what
the cell contains (free space, obstacles, starting and ending
points); this is ilustrated in Figure 2 for the same obstacle
distribution previously shown in Figure 1.

Figure 3. Change of robot orientation after message change

Movement commands are issued wirelessly to the robot by

Figure 2. Matrix encoding the environment after grid overlay
It is important to note that the path (if there is a viable one)
generated by A* is ordered from the ending point to the starting
point. Therefore, it is necessary to invert the resulting array so
that the path is ordered from start to goal. The search function
returns the sequence of interspersed X and Y cell coordinates
or ’checkpoints’ that the robot must traverse through, which
is then split into two arrays, one for each axis. Afterwards,
values for both cell size and number of cells are used to convert
from cell coordinates (dimensionless) to workspace
coordinates (in meters); Webots chooses the workspace’s
center as the origin of its coordinates system by default. A key
advantage of A* heuristic search is that the e-puck robot can
execute the path by linking each subsequent checkpoint
alternating between two movements: forward motions (which
move the robot from one checkpoint to the next) and in-place
rotations (which reorient the robot so that it faces the
forthcoming checkpoint), since its kinematics are compliant
with such movements given that the e-puck has a differential-
drive chassis.
By traversing the path array and comparing each checkpoint
with the following one, the algorithm can determine the global
orientations that the robot must achieve for each in-place
rotation in the sequence. Once the sequence of movements has
been obtained, the algorithm uses a loop to traverse the
movement sequence array, checking a flag to determine
whether the current array element corresponds to a forward
sending a single char: ’S’ to stop the robot, ’F’ to move
forward, ’A’ to rotate counterclockwise and ’H’ to rotate
clockwise. Figure 3 shows the robot’s change of orientation
once a different char is read. The e-puck’s algorithm uses a
simple switch-case structure to decode the char value it
receives, setting necessary wheel speeds to achieve the desired
motion according to its differential-drive kinematics. Current
pose (read from the “scene tree”) is cross-compared with the
desired checkpoint pose; once the absolute value of the distance
between both poses lowers below a certain threshold, the
supervisor moves on to the following array element. This
process is repeated until the entire array is traversed, thus
completing the e-puck robot’s path execution.
RESULTS
The A* heuristic search algorithm was chosen to obtain the
path, given the ease of implementating its pseudocode
(available at [WIKIPEDIA]) using object-oriented program-
ming and a low runtime when compared to other typical search
algorithms (BFS, DFS, unitary cost) by avoiding unnecessary
search space exploration.
Under intricate obstacle placement the path may have multiple
Y values for a single X value; thus there cannot be any possible
function describing Y en terms of X, Y (X ). The chosen
solution is to describe the X and Y values in terms of time, thus
generating two trajectory functions X (t) y Y (t).
Figure 4. Planned path in cell coordinates (dimensionless)

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 International Journal of Applied Engineering Research ISSN 0973-4562 Volume 11, Number 19 (2016) pp. 9772-9775
© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com
Figure 5. Fraction of the planned path in workspace
coordinates (meters)
Figure 6. Sequence of global orientations for robot alignment
during execution of the path fraction
TABLE I. list of Path checkpoints with corresponding
coordinates
Figure 4 presents a sample planned path output in cell coor-
dinates (dimensionless) for the obstacle distribution previously
shown in Figures 1 and 2. Figure 5 shows a fraction of the path
which has been converted to workspace coordinates (in meters)
and Figure 6 indicates the series of global orientations (in
radians) that the e-puck robot must obtain through in- place
rotations as it reaches each subsequent checkpoint in said
fraction. It is important to note that display preferences for the
Webots output console cannot be modified, and numbers are
represented with 17-digit floating-point precision. Therefore,
these results are presented in Tables 1 and 2 in a more
streamlined manner.
TABLE II. List of orientation changes according to sequential
checkpoint pairs
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Excluding the initial and goal points, there are a total of 16
intermediate path points; several of them can be avoided if the
algorithm could properly detect the underlying diagonal
(simultaneous X and Y) motion. In other words, when the path
repetitively alternates between horizontal and vertical
movements (“zig-zags”), A* path planning is insufficient to
achieve maximum possible optimization in this case, namely,
deducing a diagonal line that follows the same heading.
CONCLUSIONS
Webots has a predefined structure for the ’Robot’ class, from
which implemented robots such as the simulated e-puck inherit
their properties and methods. In consequence, none of these
robots can be morphed into the ’Supervisor’ class and are thus
unable to access the “scene tree”. Said limitation must be taken
into consideration when the robot requires access to property
values in the “scene tree”. In such case, adding a supervisor to
read and broadcast these values to the robot will become
mandatory.
Despite the illusion of continuous movement provided by
powerful computer hardware, all elements within Webots are
simulated in discrete time steps. Therefore, common sensor
algorithm tasks such as conditional expressions should thor-
oughly avoid checking for specific values or very small value
ranges, since in the transition between subsequent discrete time
steps said value or range might be left out.
Although each robot and/or supervisor controller is executed as
a separate Windows process in order to take advantage of
multi-threaded processors, precautions must be taken when
simulating multiple algorithms simultaneously within Webots,
since unbounded loops can bring the simulation to a complete
halt by preventing execution of the time step function.Path
planning using the A* search algorithm on a grid-overlaid
representation of a continuous environment cannot guarantee
optimal results when the path repetitively alternates movement
heading changes. It is thus necessary to identify and optimize
individual path sections in a posterior step.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper is a result of the ING-1755 research project, titled
“Development of a collaborative operation strategy for
heterogeneous multi-agent robotic systems”, funded by
Universidad Militar Nueva Granada.
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© Research India Publications. http://www.ripublication.com

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