Virtual environments have been utilised in robotics research as a tool to assess systems before deploying them in the field. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about additional motivation for the development of virtual benchmarks in order to aid in safe and productive development. In-person robotics competitions have also halted, thus limiting the scope of opportunities for students and researchers. We implemented the structure of a service robotics competition into an extendable and adaptable virtual scoring environment. The competition challenges the state of the art in home service robotics by presenting realistic household tasks for robots to complete. The virtual environment provides a foundation for competition teams to assess their systems when accessing the physical environment is not possible. We believe that utilising virtual environments as a means of assessment will lead to other benefits such as increased access and generalisation.

翻译：虚拟环境被用于机器人研究,作为在将机器人部署到实地之前评估系统的工具,COVID-19大流行为制定虚拟基准提供了额外的动力,以帮助安全和生产发展,个人机器人竞赛也停止了,从而限制了学生和研究人员的机会范围。我们将服务机器人竞争的结构落实到一个可扩展和可调整的虚拟评分环境中。竞争通过为机器人提供现实的家庭任务,挑战了家庭服务机器人的先进水平。虚拟环境为竞争团队提供了一个基础,以便在进入物理环境时评估其系统是不可能的。我们认为,利用虚拟环境作为评估手段将带来其他好处,例如增加准入和普及。