1: Introduction to Robotics with Webots

Welcome to the introductory tutorial for robotics! In the following posts, we will use Webots to guide us through common robotics programming tasks. Webots is a free, open-source robotics simulator developed in Switzerland under the Apache 2 license. The software simulates imported robots with an array of sensors which you can control within their pre-made environments. To begin with, we will work with the web based version of the program on https://robotbenchmark.net/. This version of the program runs off servers hosted by the creators of Webots but it is a lot more streamlined and limited compared to the full program. The full Webots program can be a little intimidating, so this is a good start. While the website may recommend making an account, it isn’t necessary for what we are doing. Do note that if you don’t create an account your code will not be saved if you end the simulation, so you should then copy paste your code and save it somewhere for future reference. Go to https://robotbenchmark.net/ and scroll down to right below the video. Here is a series of “benchmarks” that will teach you how to program in Webots, and by extension real life robots. Let’s start with the Viewpoint Control benchmark.