Simulation and the Duckiematrix
Simulation and the Duckiematrix#
Fig. 2 Welcome to the Duckiematrix, where simulation and reality are blurred!#
The Duckiematrix is a Unity-based virtual environment for Duckietown supporting digital twins of Duckietown robots.
Its purpose is to simulate the physics and aesthetics of a physical Duckietown environment, as well as the sensing and acting capabilities of Duckietown robots within that environment.
Of course simulation is never exactly like reality, but, from a functionality standpoint, you should be able to simulate everything that you could do on a real Duckiebot in the Duckiematrix.
It is worth knowing that, at a high level, the Duckiematrix is composed of two main components:
The engine which performs the simulation the movement (kinematics and dynamics) of the entities in the simulated world
The renderer which produces the visualization of the environment and is used to simulate the sensors (in particular the camera)
This section includes the basics of how to install and use the Duckiematrix, for more details about how it works and how you can build on top of it see the section in the part of this book about developing with the Duckiematrix