ROS-Based Co-Simulation for Formal Cyber-Physical Robotic System Design

Co-simulation is a prevalent design activity in complex robotic Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs). The heterogeneous cyber controller models, designed based on proper formalisms, need to be validated by (co-)simulation with a model of the physical environment of the robot. Due to the semantic and syntactic mismatch of these models, establishing such a co-simulation framework is extremely challenging. In this paper, we describe a generic co-simulation wrapper for a formal system modeling framework which integrates external robot models using the Robotic Operating System (ROS). Consequently, the robot, or a simulated model of its dynamics, can be validated in conjunction with the controller logic as hardware- or model-in-the-loop simulation. The presented wrapper is implemented in the ForSyDe-SystemC modeling framework and tested using a robotic case study running in the Gazebo simulator.