Simulation

Simulation Basics

Testing is an important part of building solid software, and programming robots is no different. When writing code for an FRC robot, testing often involves a fully assembled robot and dedicated time for the Programming team to experiment on it, both of which can be hard to come by at times. When time with the robot is valuable, it's important that your code works how you expect it to on the first try. That's where simulation comes in.

Simulating your robot code allows you to control every input and view every output of your robot code in a simulated environment, letting you put your "robot" in scenarios to see that it does what you want. A simple usage might be to make sure your controls aren't inverted, and a more complicated application may be physics simulating an entire autonomous routine or running automated unit tests on every build. With (quite a lot of) work, you could even practice driving entire matches before the robot is even built.

The basic flow of the simulation is shown in the diagram below, where your code does its thing and all the simulation magic can happen behind the scenes. Your inputs and setup on the GUI are fed right to your code as if the robot was actually there, allowing you to test simple systems without adding anything at all. To test more complicated systems or run physics simulations, you can add some simulation specific code to address the simulation directly and allow you to further customize your control over the simulation.

Simulation is something that can help every team, from the first-time programmers who want to make sure something works as expected to the high-level teams who want to run physics simulations and test complicated algorithms. The more work you put into developing your simulations, the more complex and detailed they can become. That being said, getting started is simple and you can see immediate results with little to no code.