Editor: Webots is a professional robot simulator widely used in academic and education. The Webots project started in 1996, initially developed by Dr. Olivier Michel at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Webots uses the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) for detecting of collisions and for simulating the rigid body dynamics. The ODE library allows to accurately simulate the physical properties of objects, such as velocity, inertia, friction, etc.
A large collection of robot models comes in the software distribution, these models can be modified whenever needed. In addition it is also possible to build new models from scratch. When designing a robot model, the user specifies both the graphical and the physical properties of the objects. The graphical properties are: the shape, the dimensions, the position and orientation, the colors, the texture, etc. of the object. The physical properties are: the mass, the friction factor, the spring and damping constants, etc. Many more features.