Introduction

Tekkotsu includes a tool called Mirage, a simulator for hosting robots within a virtual world. One purpose of Mirage is to test how robots will interact with complex environments without having to build the environment in the real world.

However, building environments in the virtual world is nontrivial. Mirage environments are specified in XML property list files, which are time-consuming to edit manually. To make Mirage more useful, we need a tool to rapidly construct Mirage environments.

Our final project is a parser which allows users to specify Mirage environments easily and quickly, without having to worry about their actual XML representations.

Goals

Implement the entire Mirage spec

• Provide complete access to all available attributes in Mirage virtual worlds
• Facilitate building virtual worlds without messing with raw XML

Provide an extensible syntax

• Allow users to easily define and repeat Mirage shape attributes
• Enable quick duplication of large groups of shapes in the environment
• Create a “Logo-style” mode to calculate object coordinates easily

Build some cool examples

• Show examples of what Mirage is capable of, given an easy way to make environments
• Have some fun