da beta: Distributable And Scalable Simulation of Robotic Applications

Simulation is an essential tool for developing robotic systems; however it is computationally intensive and does not scale well, especially for multi-robot scenarios. In this paper we introduce da beta - a system that facilitates distributable and scalable simulations of robotic applications. It overcomes many of the performance and quality limitations involved in common multi-robot simulation scenarios through horizontal scaling. Through extensive evaluation, we show that da beta significantly outperforms the widely used Gazebo robotics simulator, and easily scales well beyond the current limitations with no significant loss in performance and simulation fidelity.