About Cloudsim

Cloud-based simulation has recently become a popular choice, as it provides on-demand, scalable access to high-performance computing. The DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge makes use of a cloud-based simulation environment to allow teams across the world to develop autonomous navigation software to compete in the Virtual Competition.

Cloudsim, the software system that runs and manages simulation instances on AWS, has been developed and deployed as both a practice and competition tool. Cloud machines provide a level playing field across all teams and eliminates access to ground truth simulation data and other exploitations. In the SubT Challenge Virtual Competition, competitors submit their robot software solutions to explore the underground environments and find artifacts without prior knowledge of the world layouts or artifact locations. Therefore, it is especially important for competition worlds and artifact locations to remain hidden to competitors when they submit competition solutions to Cloudsim. The cloud infrastructure also allows the Virtual Competition to perform batch competition runs through many diverse competition worlds, and to scale with the number of competitors as machines can be requested on-demand.

Open Robotics continues to make user experience, reliability, and feature improvements to Cloudsim for the duration of the SubT Challenge Virtual Competition and beyond. The ultimate goal of Cloudsim is to host a fair competition and to host a compelling testing environment that allows the SubT Community to push the boundaries of autonomous navigation of challenging underground environments. 

Next, Cloudsim Architecture