Robot Simulator

An important (but often neglected) part of developing your robot code is to test it! Because we feel strongly about testing and simulation, the RobotPy project provides tools to make those types of things easier through the pyfrc project. From 2014-2019, RobotPy provided its own simulation GUI. Starting in 2020, RobotPy uses the WPILib simulation GUI instead.

Running the simulator

To run the GUI simulator, run your robot.py with the following arguments:

py -3 robot.py sim

python3 robot.py sim

User interface

See the WPILib Simulation User Interface documentation for more details.

2D Field Widget and Physics

The WPILib Simulation GUI has a 2D field available, just like the original PyFRC simulator had. This allows you to drive your robot around on a virtual field – in particular, it’s very useful for testing the logic of autonomous mode movements.

Note

To enable the field view, go to the ‘Window’ menu, and select 2D field view.

For the robot to move across the field, you must implement a physics module (it’s a lot easier than it sounds!). Helper functions are provided to calculate robot position for common drivetrain types.

We have a variety of examples and documentation available:

Communicating via NetworkTables

The simulator launches a NetworkTables server (just as the robot does), so it can be communicated with via standard NetworkTables tools (such as OutlineViewer, Shuffleboard, or SmartDashboard).

For this to work, you need to tell the client to connect to the IP address that your simulator is listening on (this will be localhost or 127.0.0.1).

pynetworktables2js

pynetworktables2js will automatically connect to localhost if no arguments are given.

OutlineViewer

You can type an address in when OutlineViewer launches, then tell it to start in client mode.

Shuffleboard

Shuffleboard can be configured to connect to localhost in the preferences.

SmartDashboard

Using SmartDashboard, you need to launch the jar using the following command:

$ java -jar SmartDashboard.jar ip 127.0.0.1

Next Steps

The next section discusses a very important part of writing robot code – Unit testing robot code.