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Sirius
Simulation of robots
in
unknown streets
Press on Button to start the simulation.
What is Sirius
Sirius - Simulation of robots in unknown
streets
- is an application to simulate a robot that is searching for a target
inside a special type of polygons called streets. Usage of Sirius is explained
on this page.
The Streets Page will give you more information on polygons and streets.
The Robot Page will give you more information on robots and their strategies.
Usage of Sirius
Example of the Sirius Application
The Sirius window consists of four major areas:
-
On top are the menubar and the quickbutton bar. The menubutton gives you
access to all of the StreetGUI functions. The quickbutton bar gives you
fast access to some of the menu entries.
-
To the left is the main editor window. This is where the polygon can be
edited and the start and target point of the robot are defined.
-
To the right is the robot output window. This is where the robots will
write informational messages while walking around in the street.
-
At the bottom is the status line where important messages are displayed.
Editing the polygon
To edit the polygon, simply add vertices by clicking the mouse at the coordinates
where you want a new vertex to be added. Edges will be added automatically.
The polygon will allways be a closed Polygon. You will notice that two
polygon vertices are marked in green instead of red. The new point will
be added between these two vertices. To insert vertices between two other
vertices, first change the insertion pair by clicking on one of the desired
points.
When the robot is set to Target
Step Mode, the polygon will be tested to be a valid street while editing.
Vertices that would make the polygon invalid will not be added. You can
add invalid vertices when the robot is in Event
Step Mode or Micro
Step Mode. Before starting the robot, the polygon will be tested to
be a valid street. You can always test by selecting Arena/Validate from
the menu.
You can delete a vertex by clicking on it with the right mouse button.
You can also move a vertex by left clicking and dragging it to the desired
position.
Moving start and target Point
The start and/or target point initially position on the edge of the polygon
when the polygon is a valid street for the first time and the robot is
set to target step mode. When the robot is set to micro or event step mode,
the start and target points are set when the validate function is executed.
Start and target points can be moved by clicking and dragging them with
the mouse. When the robot is set to target step mode, the valid areas on
the edge of the polygon are shown in black color, while invalid areas are
shown in gray. The target point can not be moved outside of the current
valid area, but when moving the start point out of the current valid area,
the area may change to the next valid area. When this happens, the target
point may also be moved to the corresponding valid region.
When the robot is set to micro or event step mode, no region checking
is done, so the start and/or target points may be moved around freely,
in fact they can even be moved off the polygons edge. Before starting the
robot, both start and target point will be moved to the nearest available
valid area automatically.
The robot step modes
Robots can be set to three different step modes. These modes are:
-
Target step mode: When in target step
mode, the robot will automatically start after an editing operation such
as adding a vertex to the polygon or moving the start point has been performed.
The entire robot path will be calculated and the path will be printed to
the screen only when the robot has reached the target point. This enables
the user to imediately check the results of the editing action on the robots
path.
-
Event step mode: When in event step mode,
the robot will redraw it's path whenever it detects a new event it has
to react on. When watched on the screen, the movement of the robot will
look like a kind of jumping from one point to the other. This mode is faster
than the micro step mode.
-
Micro step mode: When set to micro step
mode, the robot will redraw it's path after doing just a small step. This
will allow the user to follow the progress of the robot on the screen and
to examine the decisions made closely.
When the robot is set to event or micro step mode, the robot will not start
automatically. It has to be started by using either the start button or
the robot/start menu entry. In these two modes, the robot can be paused
along it's path using the pause button or Robot/pause menu entry. You can
then analyse the output closely. To resume the tour, just press the start
button again. You can also use the next step button or menu entry to perform
a single step and pause after that. To reset the robot to the start point,
press the reset button or use the robot/reset menu entry.
The robot options
Some Robots can have additional options. These can be set in the robot
options dialog, which is displayed when robot/options menu entry is selected.
