About Symonym

Symonym is a simulator for rigid body physics, sensors, and controllers in robotics and automation domains. The interface and tools are optimized for machine interaction which is a different approach than many simulators and game engines focusing on human interfaces. The main idea is to allow machine generation, running, and evaluation of the results of various types of simulations.We avoid the typical user IDE and screen-based 3-D editing of simulations and instead use a packaging system much more like a programmer uses source files run through a compiler. This allows for regression, batch assembly, and highly scripted and automated simulation construction. This approach may be harder to learn and slower for a single simulation, but if you are managing large numbers of simulations, simulation runs, or permutations of variables in the simulations, this alternative approach wins handily. This also works equally well in all the authoring platforms we support yet it takes advantage of specific tools for simulation assets like Solidworks files, VRML export, etc.

How We Use Symonym

We use Symonym to regression test our firmware (through plugins) for both existing, contract, and future product development. We also use Symonym to demonstrate our interfaces and technologies like networked Brainstem controllers, etc. Since the interfaces and functionality directly mirror our products, users can switch freely between synthetic and real hardware with only a small change to to a configuration file.We also use Symonym to simply view and analyze large, complex, or spatial data. This may be the output of laser or the beam pattern of a sonar ranger. Having a cross-platform, distributable mechanism for these tasks is useful in its own regard.

Other Uses

Since Symonym is optimized for machine interfaces, complex algorithms for AI such as genetic algorithms and planners can take advantage of Symonym to run parallel, faster than real-time simulations to evaluate choices of anticipated circumstances. This optimizes the selection and planning of complex circumstances while the robot is navigating or following a pre-calculated course.