Virtual experimental stand for automated fiducial marker comparison in gazebo environment

Abstract

This paper presents experimental automated approach for comparing fiducial marker systems. Previously we compared ARTag, AprilTag, CALTag systems under three types of adverse conditions: systematic occlusion, arbitrary overlap with an object and marker rotation. In effort to improve statistical significance of our previous work with manual experiments, we faced a challenge of conducting over a thousand additional experiments. Using Gazebo environment we implemented virtual robot system that performs all necessary manipulations automatically. Further, we investigate adding Gaussian noise in order to make simulations more realistic.