History

A Brief History of Symonym

Symonym started out as a general purpose robot simulator for verifying and testing new robot designs.

The LRV that was modeled early on in Symonym

The Garcia Model

The next model in the Symonym background was the Garcia model with a scanning laser implemented. This model was useful in developing both our laser viewer code (it could target either the real, physical laser or a simulated one with the same interface). It also provided a quick look at how the Garcia API drives the robot, senses the world, etc.

Large Point Clouds for NIST

While we were developing Symonym, we were involved in some USAR (Urban Search and Rescue) exercises in coordination with FEMA, NIST, and fellow researchers. During these mock disasters, we obtained some fascinating, large datasets of 3-D laser scans of rubble piles, collapsed buildings, and a wrecked passenger train.The viewer and general graphics interface as well as the packaging system employed by Symonym offered a rapid and high performance viewer for these immense data sets. This system has been used in subsequent disaster preparation exercises for other datasets including some generated by Acroname's "Laser on a Stick" at Disaster City in Texas.

12 Megapixel Dataset at Disaster City

Recent Use

We have been quietly re-working large portions of Symonym to take full, native advantage of some new features in conventional computers including massive threading and 64-bit performance. This requires eliminating and re-working large portions of the differential equation solver for the rigid-body physics as well as changes and improvements to the collision system to handle different types of shapes and surfaces in future models.While this work goes on under the hood, Acroname uses the simulator in server form for full regression testing of the firmware, coding tools, and loading process in proprietary BrainStem controller designs for large companies using the controllers in massive assembly line work. The simulation allows us to catch coding issues and test at scales that would otherwise be difficult to accomplish with physical hardware.

A Glimpse at the Future

Keep an eye out for Symonym in the future. We now have a full repository system for managing many more datasets and can readily re-create all our legacy simulations as we continue to improve and enhance the features.You can expect to see some exciting models and capabilities for a variety of uses as we refine and make public the work we are doing.