MultiVehicle simulator (MVSim)

Lightweight, realistic dynamical simulator for 2D ("2.5D") vehicles and robots. It is tailored to analysis of vehicle dynamics, wheel-ground contact forces and accurate simulation of typical robot sensors (e.g. 2D and 3D lidars).

This package includes C++ libraries, standalone applications, and ROS 1 and ROS 2 nodes.

License: 3-clause BSD License Copyright (C) 2014-2025 Jose Luis Blanco jlblanco@ual.es (University of Almeria) and collaborators

Please, refer to the MVSim SoftwareX paper (or the ArXiV preprint) for a gentle introduction to the project architecture. If you want to cite MVSim in your work, please use:

@article{blanco2023mvsim,
  title = {MultiVehicle Simulator (MVSim): Lightweight dynamics simulator for multiagents and mobile robotics research},
  journal = {SoftwareX},
  volume = {23},
  pages = {101443},
  year = {2023},
  issn = {2352-7110},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2023.101443},
  url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352711023001395},
  author = {José-Luis Blanco-Claraco and Borys Tymchenko and Francisco José Mañas-Alvarez and Fernando Cañadas-Aránega and Ángel López-Gázquez and José Carlos Moreno}
}

ROSCon talk

Spanish talk with English slides and subtitles (slides here):

Installation

See installation documentation for all the details and options.

The easiest way to install if you already have ROS 1 or ROS 2 is:

sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-mvsim

Then jump to next steps to see how to launch some of the demo worlds.

Demo videos

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/766db164-2d16-44f4-acbf-2f15b73c1ab3

Build matrix status

| Distro | Build dev | Build releases | Stable version | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ROS 2 Humble (u22.04) | | amd64
arm64 | | | ROS 2 Jazzy @ u24.04 | | amd64
arm64 | | | ROS 2 Kilted @ u24.04 | | amd64
arm64 | | | ROS 2 Rolling (u24.04) | | amd64
arm64 | |

| EOL distro | Stable version | | --- | --- | | ROS 1 Melodic (u18.04) | | | ROS 1 Noetic (u20.04) | | | ROS 2 Foxy (u20.04) | | | ROS 2 Iron (u22.04) | |

Docs

• Main documentation site

If you clone this repository, remember to checkout the git submodules too:

git clone https://github.com/MRPT/mvsim.git --recursive

Launch demos

See more on first steps here.

Standalone:

mvsim launch mvsim_tutorial/demo_warehouse.world.xml
mvsim launch mvsim_tutorial/demo_2robots.world.xml
mvsim launch mvsim_tutorial/test_mesh.world.xml

ROS 1:

roslaunch mvsim demo_depth_camera.launch

ROS 2:

ros2 launch mvsim demo_warehouse.launch.py
ros2 launch mvsim demo_depth_camera.launch.py

Main features

• Lightweight in memory, CPU and library requirements.
• Fully configurable via .xml "world" files.
• Headless mode, suitable for dockerized environments.
• World maps:
  • Occupancy gridmaps: input as images or MRPT binary maps (from icp-slam, rbpf-slam, etc.)
  • Elevation meshes.
• Vehicle models:
  • Differential driven (2 & 4 wheel drive).
  • Ackermann steering (kinematic & dynamic steering, different mechanical drive models).
  • Ackermann steering with mechanical differentials of full grade.
• Sensors:
  • 2D and 3D Lidars: Robots see each other, their own bodies, etc.
  • RGB cameras
  • Depth cameras
• Interface to vehicles: Custom Python interface, or ROS. Choose among:
  • Raw access to forces and motor torques.
  • Twist commands (using internal controllers).