CoppeliaSim forums

Morning,
My dissertation project requires me to use Coppelia Sim for developing a swarm robotics algorithm. I have been testing various algorithms using the kilobot model supplied with the program however my laptop cannot handle more than about 50 of them in the same scene.
As a result I'm going to buy/build a new computer to run simulations quicker and scenes with larger amounts of models. I noticed when running simulations the program doesn't use the integrated graphics in my laptop and is very taxing on the CPU and RAM. I was wondering which direction I should be going spec wise for optimal running. Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers

Hello,

50 robots is normally already quite a lot. You should first look at optimizing the robot models (e.g. simplification, reducing the triangle/vertices count), and maybe also reducing the number of times you perform a certain calculation (e.g. distance calculations, collision detections, etc., normally do not need to be done in each simulation step (e.g. you could skip a few steps between individual calculations). Additionally, you could also reduce the visualization of the models to a strict minimum (e.g. a simple cylinder or cube, which is not a big problem with the Kilobot anyways).

But normally a mid-range machine with dedicated graphics card (nothing too fancy) should do well in most situations.

Cheers

Cheers, for the quick response. I'll work on what has to happen with each step count because a calculation every one isn't strictly necessary for what I am doing at the moment.