Simulator installation and usage

Introduction

Voltron and the Autoware project both use a simulator called SVL (formerly LGSVL). However, we use the SVL simulator in a slightly different way than Autoware, so take their documentation with a grain of salt. (Why?)

If set up properly, SVL can perform realistic simulations that we can use to test and refine our algorithms. However, it also takes a lot of power to run. Consequently, developers can access SVL through our own development server.

Installation

SVL is run outside of the VDE container. Running graphically intensive applications inside a container is just weird and unnecessary. Instead we run SVL outside, then allow the simulator to interact with the container over a shared network.

1. Head to the SVL home page and download the latest release. It should be a *.zip file. Unzip it to a handy place on your computer. Inside the unzipped folder, you can double-click simulator to start it (you can also run ./simulator within the directory in a terminal).

2. Once the program starts, you'll need to create a free SVL account and confirm your email (don't worry, they don't spam you).

3. Now enter VDE and follow these instructions to install the SVL Bridge inside your container. You'll want to choose the "Building the source code" option and clone everything into your user home so it isn't deleted.

Running the simulator

1. Start the simulator and configure a new simulation (if a suitable one doesn't already exist). You can follow these official instructions.
2. In order to for our code to communicate with the simulator, you'll need to run the SVL Bridge using

    source (path\to\bridge\repository)/install/setup.bash
    lgsvl_bridge

(See here for more details)

Why we break with Autoware

SVL is an actively developed project (hooray!) and that means frequent changes are made. Autoware often takes a while to update their code to reflect updates to SVL. In order for Voltron to use the latest features of the simulator (and add flexibility), we just add in SVL directly instead of using Autoware's exotic modifications.