Interactive dynamic simulators are an accelerator for developing novel robotic control algorithms and complex systems involving humans and robots. In user training and synthetic data generation applications, high-fidelity visualizations from the simulation are essential. Yet, robotic simulators often limit their rendering algorithms to preserve real-time interaction with the simulation. Advancements in Graphics Processing Units (GPU) enable improved visualization without compromising performance. However, these advancements cannot be fully leveraged in simulation frameworks that use legacy graphics application programming interfaces (API) to interface with the GPU. This paper presents a performance-focused and lightweight rendering engine supporting the modern Vulkan graphics API that can be easily integrated with other simulation frameworks to enhance visualizations. To illustrate the proposed method, our engine is used to modernize the legacy rendering pipeline of the Asynchronous Multi-Body Framework (AMBF), a dynamic simulation framework used extensively for interactive robotics simulation development. This new rendering engine implements graphical features such as physically based rendering (PBR), anti-aliasing, and ray-traced shadows, significantly improving the image fidelity of AMBF. Computational experiments show that the engine can render a simulated scene with over seven million triangles while maintaining GPU computation times within two milliseconds.

翻译：交互式动态模拟器是开发新型机器人控制算法以及涉及人与机器人的复杂系统的加速器。在用户训练和合成数据生成应用中，来自仿真的高保真可视化至关重要。然而，机器人模拟器通常限制其渲染算法以保持与仿真的实时交互。图形处理器（GPU）的进步使得在不牺牲性能的前提下改进可视化成为可能。然而，在使用传统图形应用程序编程接口（API）与GPU交互的仿真框架中，这些进步无法被充分利用。本文提出了一种以性能为中心、轻量级的渲染引擎，支持现代Vulkan图形API，可轻松与其他仿真框架集成以增强可视化效果。为阐明所提方法，我们的引擎被用于现代化异步多体框架（AMBF）的传统渲染管线，该动态仿真框架被广泛用于交互式机器人仿真开发。该新渲染引擎实现了基于物理的渲染（PBR）、抗锯齿和光线追踪阴影等图形功能，显著提升了AMBF的图像保真度。计算实验表明，该引擎能够渲染包含超过七百万个三角形的仿真场景，同时将GPU计算时间保持在两毫秒以内。