Simulation

Gazebo

Gazebo is an open-source robotics simulator, originally developed in the early 2000s and long maintained alongside ROS by Open Robotics, providing rigid-body physics via engines like ODE, sensor simulation, and plugin-based robot models described in SDF or URDF. The classic version was succeeded by the modernized Gazebo (formerly Ignition) architecture. It remains a default choice for ROS-integrated testing of navigation, manipulation, and multi-robot systems.

Why it matters for physical AI

Tight ROS integration makes Gazebo the standard rehearsal environment for full robot software stacks, though large-scale policy training has shifted toward GPU-parallel simulators optimized for reinforcement learning throughput.