This repository provides a Pythonic API for the CoppeliaSim robotics simulator based on their b0 interface. If you are a student or work for an academic institution you will probably need to download the "Edu" (educational) version.

sudo python3 -m pip install msgpack

1. Download CoppeliaSim from their website and uncompress the compressed tarball in an appropriate directory.

2. Edit your .bashrc file and add the following lines (make sure you adapt the path in the first of the three lines accordingly). After editing the file, make sure that the changes are applied (if you are not sure about how to do that, just log off and log back in).

export COPPELIASIM_ROOT=/home/USER/software/coppeliasim
alias coppeliasim="cd $COPPELIASIM_ROOT; bash coppeliaSim.sh"
export B0_RESOLVER="tcp://127.0.0.1:22000"

make sure you adapt the path in the first of the five lines accordingly

3. The latest version of CoppeliaSim has a couple of minor bugs that we have to fix (a,b). Run the following commands in the command line:

cd $COPPELIASIM_ROOT
sed -i 's/function LoadModel(/function LoadModelFromFile(/g' lua/b0RemoteApiServer.lua
rm libsimExtDynamicsVortex.so

4. We want to automatically start Coppelia's b0 interface automatically with the simulator. To do that, use the following commands:

cd $COPPELIASIM_ROOT
mv lua/b0RemoteApiServer.lua simAddOnScript_b0RemoteApiServer.lua

The process is similar to the steps stated previously with the following modifications:

• On latest versions of mac OS the default shell is zsh so you may have to edit .zshrc instead of .bashrc.

• The setting of environment variables differs a bit from the previous. It has to be at follows:

export COPPELIASIM_ROOT=/Users/USER/software/CoppeliaSim
export COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR=/Users/USER/software/CoppeliaSim
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:$COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=$COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR
export B0_RESOLVER="tcp://127.0.0.1:22000"
alias coppeliasim="open ${COPPELIASIM_ROOT_DIR}/coppeliaSim.app"

• Make sure that you have installed opencv-python-headless instead of opencv-python and never both at the same time.

• Finally, in macOS Catalina you will have to disable the System Integrity Protection or it won't let you set the global variables DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Here you have a link that explain the process for enable or disable it.

The API provided is composed of one main class and some auxiliary ones. The main class is called CoppeliaSimAPI and provides some methods which are already provided by the b0 version of CoppeliaSim API, plus some additional methods.

The following is a list of the methods which are already provided as part of CoppeliaSim b0 API. If you have any doubts about what they do, please check the original documentation:

  start(self) ###
  stop(self) ###
  get_objects_children(parent, children_type='sim.handle_all') ###
  get_object_name(object_handle, alternative_name='') ###
  create_model(model, x, y, z, rz) ###
  get_object_handle(object_name) ###
  set_object_position(obj, x, y, z) ###
  set_object_orientation(obj, lst) ###
  remove_object(obj) ###
  run_script(script) ###
  close(self) ###

Additionally, the CoppeliaSimAPI class provides the following methods:

• set_object_transform(obj, x, y, z, anglez) Allows setting the position and orientation using a single call.
• create_human(x, y, z, angle) Creates a cylinder following human. You can move the human by moving the cylinder.
• create_wall(p1, p2) Creates a wall from p1 to p2, where both are lists containing the x, y, z coordinates of the ends of the wall.
• scale_object(handle, sx, sy, sz): Scales the given object, using sx, sy and sz as the ratios.