[REVIEW]: RobotDART: a versatile robot simulator for robotics and machine learning researchers

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @costashatz (Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis)
Repository: https://github.com/NOSALRO/robot_dart
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch):
Version: v1.1.0
Editor: @boisgera
Reviewers: @c-joly, @bstanciulescu
Archive: 10.5281/zenodo.13922881

Status

Status badge code:

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Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/e13ef9a388c2a9adbfc174fabbeddfce/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/e13ef9a388c2a9adbfc174fabbeddfce)

Reviewers and authors:

Please avoid lengthy details of difficulties in the review thread. Instead, please create a new issue in the target repository and link to those issues (especially acceptance-blockers) by leaving comments in the review thread below. (For completists: if the target issue tracker is also on GitHub, linking the review thread in the issue or vice versa will create corresponding breadcrumb trails in the link target.)

Reviewer instructions & questions

@c-joly & @bstanciulescu, your review will be checklist based. Each of you will have a separate checklist that you should update when carrying out your review.
First of all you need to run this command in a separate comment to create the checklist:

@editorialbot generate my checklist

The reviewer guidelines are available here: https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reviewer_guidelines.html. Any questions/concerns please let @boisgera know.

✨ Please start on your review when you are able, and be sure to complete your review in the next six weeks, at the very latest ✨

Checklists

📝 Checklist for @c-joly

📝 Checklist for @bstanciulescu

[editorialbot]

Hello humans, I'm @editorialbot, a robot that can help you with some common editorial tasks.

For a list of things I can do to help you, just type:

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For example, to regenerate the paper pdf after making changes in the paper's md or bib files, type:

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[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.90  T=1.40 s (822.4 files/s, 415724.1 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HTML                           296         206671              7         190230
XML                            313           1207           2803          91984
Markdown                       297          27955              1          27897
C++                             80           1938            884           9577
JavaScript                      36           1017           1334           4921
C/C++ Header                    59            958            452           3900
Python                          32            724            661           3104
XSD                              4            131             14           1636
GLSL                            10            128             77            578
YAML                             5             18              9            381
Bourne Shell                     6             51             23            313
TeX                              1             35              0            289
CMake                            8             56            130            205
XSLT                             1              0              5             10
sed                              1              0              2              4
CSS                              2              0              0              2
JSON                             1              0              0              1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                          1152         240889           6402         335032
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Commit count by author:

   907	Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis
   222	Jean-Baptiste Mouret
    61	DionisTotsila
    18	Vaios Papaspyros
    14	Ivan Bergonzani
    14	dinies
     7	Antoine Cully
     6	Dorian Goepp
     6	eloise
     6	kostastsing
     5	DALIN Eloise
     5	aneoshun
     3	Dionis Totsila
     3	Eloise Dalin
     3	eloise dalin
     3	jspitz
     2	Aneoshun
     2	Matthias Mayr
     2	Olivier Rochel
     2	Pierre Desreumaux
     1	Erick Kramer
     1	Vassilis Vassiliades
     1	artificialsimon
     1	itUserName
     1	kounelisagis

[editorialbot]

Paper file info:

📄 Wordcount for paper.md is 2323

✅ The paper includes a Statement of need section

[editorialbot]

License info:

✅ License found: BSD 2-Clause "Simplified" License (Valid open source OSI approved license)

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

OK DOIs

- None

MISSING DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: Black-box data-efficient policy search for robotic...
- 10.1109/iros.2004.1389727 may be a valid DOI for title: Design and use paradigms for gazebo, an open-sourc...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Gazebo Simulator
- 10.1109/iros.2012.6386109 may be a valid DOI for title: Mujoco: A physics engine for model-based control
- No DOI given, and none found for title: PyBullet, a Python module for physics simulation f...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Open Dynamics Engine
- 10.21105/joss.00500 may be a valid DOI for title: Dart: Dynamic animation and robotics toolkit
- 10.1126/scirobotics.aau5872 may be a valid DOI for title: Learning agile and dynamic motor skills for legged...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Learning quadrupedal locomotion over challenging t...
- 10.1109/iros.2017.8202133 may be a valid DOI for title: Domain randomization for transferring deep neural ...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: A review of robot learning for manipulation: Chall...
- 10.1007/s10846-017-0468-y may be a valid DOI for title: Survey of model-based reinforcement learning: Appl...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Recent advances in robot learning from demonstrati...
- 10.1109/tro.2019.2958211 may be a valid DOI for title: A survey on policy search algorithms for learning ...
- 10.1109/tevc.2017.2735550 may be a valid DOI for title: Using centroidal voronoi tessellations to scale up...
- 10.1016/j.robot.2017.11.010 may be a valid DOI for title: Reset-free trial-and-error learning for robot dama...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: 20 years of reality gap: a few thoughts about simu...
- 10.1109/icra.2018.8463197 may be a valid DOI for title: Bayesian optimization with automatic prior selecti...
- 10.1109/icra.2018.8461083 may be a valid DOI for title: Using parameterized black-box priors to scale up m...
- 10.1609/aaai.v32i1.11687 may be a valid DOI for title: Alternating optimisation and quadrature for robust...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Multi-objective model-based policy search for data...
- 10.1109/robio55434.2022.10011996 may be a valid DOI for title: Skill-based multi-objective reinforcement learning...
- 10.1109/iros51168.2021.9636292 may be a valid DOI for title: Learning of parameters in behavior trees for movem...
- 10.1109/case49997.2022.9926713 may be a valid DOI for title: Learning skill-based industrial robot tasks with u...
- 10.1145/3512290.3528751 may be a valid DOI for title: Hierarchical quality-diversity for online damage r...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Safety-aware robot damage recovery using constrain...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Combining planning, reasoning and reinforcement le...
- 10.1145/3596912 may be a valid DOI for title: Online damage recovery for physical robots with hi...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Towards semi-episodic learning for robot damage re...
- 10.1109/tsmc.2023.3262954 may be a valid DOI for title: Self-correcting quadratic programming-based robot ...
- 10.3389/frobt.2022.974537 may be a valid DOI for title: Behavior policy learning: Learning multi-stage tas...
- 10.1109/iisa59645.2023.10345937 may be a valid DOI for title: Evolving Dynamic Locomotion Policies in Minutes
- 10.1109/iisa59645.2023.10345879 may be a valid DOI for title: Effective Skill Learning via Autonomous Goal Repre...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: End-to-End Stable Imitation Learning via Autonomou...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Robust reinforcement learning with Bayesian optimi...
- 10.1109/humanoids.2017.8246947 may be a valid DOI for title: TALOS: A new humanoid research platform targeted f...

INVALID DOIs

- None

[c-joly]

Review checklist for @c-joly

Conflict of interest

• I confirm that I have read the JOSS conflict of interest (COI) policy and that: I have no COIs with reviewing this work or that any perceived COIs have been waived by JOSS for the purpose of this review.

Code of Conduct

• I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the https://github.com/NOSALRO/robot_dart?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE or COPYING file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@costashatz) made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?
• Substantial scholarly effort: Does this submission meet the scope eligibility described in the JOSS guidelines
• Data sharing: If the paper contains original data, data are accessible to the reviewers. If the paper contains no original data, please check this item.
• Reproducibility: If the paper contains original results, results are entirely reproducible by reviewers. If the paper contains no original results, please check this item.
• Human and animal research: If the paper contains original data research on humans subjects or animals, does it comply with JOSS's human participants research policy and/or animal research policy? If the paper contains no such data, please check this item.

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

• Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve, who the target audience is, and its relation to other work?
• State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[bstanciulescu]

Review checklist for @bstanciulescu

Conflict of interest

• I confirm that I have read the JOSS conflict of interest (COI) policy and that: I have no COIs with reviewing this work or that any perceived COIs have been waived by JOSS for the purpose of this review.

Code of Conduct

• I confirm that I read and will adhere to the JOSS code of conduct.

General checks

• Repository: Is the source code for this software available at the https://github.com/NOSALRO/robot_dart?
• License: Does the repository contain a plain-text LICENSE or COPYING file with the contents of an OSI approved software license?
• Contribution and authorship: Has the submitting author (@costashatz) made major contributions to the software? Does the full list of paper authors seem appropriate and complete?
• Substantial scholarly effort: Does this submission meet the scope eligibility described in the JOSS guidelines
• Data sharing: If the paper contains original data, data are accessible to the reviewers. If the paper contains no original data, please check this item.
• Reproducibility: If the paper contains original results, results are entirely reproducible by reviewers. If the paper contains no original results, please check this item.
• Human and animal research: If the paper contains original data research on humans subjects or animals, does it comply with JOSS's human participants research policy and/or animal research policy? If the paper contains no such data, please check this item.

Functionality

• Installation: Does installation proceed as outlined in the documentation?
• Functionality: Have the functional claims of the software been confirmed?
• Performance: If there are any performance claims of the software, have they been confirmed? (If there are no claims, please check off this item.)

Documentation

• A statement of need: Do the authors clearly state what problems the software is designed to solve and who the target audience is?
• Installation instructions: Is there a clearly-stated list of dependencies? Ideally these should be handled with an automated package management solution.
• Example usage: Do the authors include examples of how to use the software (ideally to solve real-world analysis problems).
• Functionality documentation: Is the core functionality of the software documented to a satisfactory level (e.g., API method documentation)?
• Automated tests: Are there automated tests or manual steps described so that the functionality of the software can be verified?
• Community guidelines: Are there clear guidelines for third parties wishing to 1) Contribute to the software 2) Report issues or problems with the software 3) Seek support

Software paper

• Summary: Has a clear description of the high-level functionality and purpose of the software for a diverse, non-specialist audience been provided?
• A statement of need: Does the paper have a section titled 'Statement of need' that clearly states what problems the software is designed to solve, who the target audience is, and its relation to other work?
• State of the field: Do the authors describe how this software compares to other commonly-used packages?
• Quality of writing: Is the paper well written (i.e., it does not require editing for structure, language, or writing quality)?
• References: Is the list of references complete, and is everything cited appropriately that should be cited (e.g., papers, datasets, software)? Do references in the text use the proper citation syntax?

[costashatz]

@boisgera @c-joly @bstanciulescu thank you for handling the review of our submission! We have tried to update our text such that it's closer to the 1000 words limit (we are still slightly over, ~1200, but we would need to completely re-write the text to reduce it more). Let us know if this is OK with the journal's policies or if we need to further adapt.

@editorialbot generate pdf

[boisgera]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[boisgera]

@boisgera @c-joly @bstanciulescu thank you for handling the review of our submission! We have tried to update our text such that it's closer to the 1000 words limit (we are still slightly over, ~1200, but we would need to completely re-write the text to reduce it more). Let us know if this is OK with the journal's policies or if we need to further adapt.

@costashatz Thanks for this effort! Since your paper is not "significantly longer than 1000 words" anymore, this is fine.

[boisgera]

Hi @bstanciulescu! Since you usually work with Windows, could you try to install RobotDART on Ubuntu 22.04 with WSL and report what you get please? AFAICT this is not explicitly supported so you may run into issues but OTOH that would be really nice to know that it's a workable solution for Windows users.

[boisgera]

Hi @bstanciulescu! Since you usually work with Windows, could you try to install RobotDART on Ubuntu 22.04 with WSL and report what you get please? AFAICT this is not explicitly supported so you may run into issues but OTOH that would be really nice to know that it's a workable solution for Windows users.

Great news! @bstanciulescu told me (in a private communication) that he successfully managed to install and run RoboDart on WSL, without any fiddling! I asked him to open an issue to report his experience so that this information can be added to the project documentation.

[boisgera]

Hi @costashatz,

Could you add the DOI metadata your bibliography entries? (The bibtex attribute is doi.)

The editorial bot has found some of these DOIs (see the comment above) but they still need to be checked and added manually (the bot has also failed to find many DOIs).

Best regards,

Sébastien

[costashatz]

Hi @costashatz,

Could you add the DOI metadata your bibliography entries? (The bibtex attribute is doi.)

The editorial bot has found some of these DOIs (see the comment above) but they still need to be checked and added manually (the bot has also failed to find many DOIs).

Best regards,

Sébastien

This should be tackled by NOSALRO/robot_dart@51e1cb0. There are 3 references that do not have DOIs:

• Bullet: we are just citing a website since there's no paper
• ODE: similar to the above
• A review of robot learning for manipulation: Challenges, representations, and algorithms. This is a JMLR paper, and JMLR does not issue DOIs.

Let me know how you wish to handle those.

Thank you!

[boisgera]

@editorialbot check references

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

✅ OK DOIs

- 10.1109/IROS.2004.1389727 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2012.6386109 is OK
- 10.1126/scirobotics.abc5986 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2017.8202133 is OK
- 10.1146/annurev-control-100819-063206 is OK
- 10.1109/TRO.2019.2958211 is OK
- 10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2017.8246947 is OK

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: PyBullet, a Python module for physics simulation f...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Open Dynamics Engine
- No DOI given, and none found for title: A review of robot learning for manipulation: Chall...

❌ MISSING DOIs

- None

❌ INVALID DOIs

- https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00500 is INVALID because of 'https://doi.org/' prefix

[boisgera]

This should be tackled by NOSALRO/robot_dart@51e1cb0. There are 3 references that do not have DOIs:

• Bullet: we are just citing a website since there's no paper

• ODE: similar to the above

• A review of robot learning for manipulation: Challenges, representations, and algorithms. This is a JMLR paper, and JMLR does not issue DOIs.

Let me know how you wish to handle those.

Great, thank you! Nothing to do for references that do not have DOIs.

Could you accept this PR to silence the (slightly pedantic) DOI checker?

[boisgera]

Hi everyone,

Everything looks good at this stage; thank you @costashatz, @c-joly and @bstanciulescu for your efforts in this review 🙏

We're now entering to the final "post-review" stage!

Best regards,

Sébastien

[boisgera]

Post-Review Checklist for Editor and Authors

Additional Author Tasks After Review is Complete

• Double check authors and affiliations (including ORCIDs)
• Make a release of the software with the latest changes from the review and post the version number here. This is the version that will be used in the JOSS paper.
• Archive the release on Zenodo/figshare/etc and post the DOI here.
• Make sure that the title and author list (including ORCIDs) in the archive match those in the JOSS paper.
• Make sure that the license listed for the archive is the same as the software license.

Editor Tasks Prior to Acceptance

• Read the text of the paper and offer comments/corrections (as either a list or a pull request)
• Check that the archive title, author list, version tag, and the license are correct
• Set archive DOI with @editorialbot set <DOI here> as archive
• Set version with @editorialbot set <version here> as version
• Double check rendering of paper with @editorialbot generate pdf
• Specifically check the references with @editorialbot check references and ask author(s) to update as needed
• Recommend acceptance with @editorialbot recommend-accept

[boisgera]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[boisgera]

No comment/correction about the paper from me. 👍

I'll need the DOI of the project archive for my next checklist item (see Additional Author Tasks After Review is Complete)

[costashatz]

@boisgera thank you for handling the process and sorry for being late. Here's the data:

• Version: v1.1.0
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13922881
• I checked the license and author details

Let me know if I need to do anything else. Thank you again! Also, a tremendous thank you to @c-joly and @bstanciulescu for the their effort; RobotDART has been clearly improved by this review!

[boisgera]

@editorialbot set 10.5281/zenodo.13922881 as archive

[editorialbot]

Done! archive is now 10.5281/zenodo.13922881

[boisgera]

@editorialbot set 1.1.0 as version

[editorialbot]

Done! version is now 1.1.0

[boisgera]

@editorialbot set v1.1.0 as version

[editorialbot]

Done! version is now v1.1.0

[boisgera]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[boisgera]

@editorialbot check references

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

✅ OK DOIs

- 10.1109/IROS.2004.1389727 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2012.6386109 is OK
- 10.21105/joss.00500 is OK
- 10.1126/scirobotics.abc5986 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2017.8202133 is OK
- 10.1146/annurev-control-100819-063206 is OK
- 10.1109/TRO.2019.2958211 is OK
- 10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2017.8246947 is OK

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: PyBullet, a Python module for physics simulation f...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Open Dynamics Engine
- No DOI given, and none found for title: A review of robot learning for manipulation: Chall...

❌ MISSING DOIs

- None

❌ INVALID DOIs

- None

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[boisgera]

@editorialbot recommend-accept

[editorialbot]

Attempting dry run of processing paper acceptance...

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

✅ OK DOIs

- 10.1109/IROS.2004.1389727 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2012.6386109 is OK
- 10.21105/joss.00500 is OK
- 10.1126/scirobotics.abc5986 is OK
- 10.1109/IROS.2017.8202133 is OK
- 10.1146/annurev-control-100819-063206 is OK
- 10.1109/TRO.2019.2958211 is OK
- 10.1109/HUMANOIDS.2017.8246947 is OK

🟡 SKIP DOIs

- No DOI given, and none found for title: PyBullet, a Python module for physics simulation f...
- No DOI given, and none found for title: Open Dynamics Engine
- No DOI given, and none found for title: A review of robot learning for manipulation: Chall...

❌ MISSING DOIs

- None

❌ INVALID DOIs

- None

[editorialbot]

👋 @openjournals/dsais-eics, this paper is ready to be accepted and published.

Check final proof 👉📄 Download article

If the paper PDF and the deposit XML files look good in openjournals/joss-papers#6007, then you can now move forward with accepting the submission by compiling again with the command @editorialbot accept

[crvernon]

@editorialbot generate pdf

🔍 checking out the following:

• reviewer checklists are completed or addressed
• version set
• archive set
• archive names (including order) and title in archive matches those specified in the paper
• archive uses the same license as the repo and is OSI approved as open source
• archive DOI and version match or redirect to those set by editor in review thread
• paper is error free - grammar and typos
• paper is error free - test links in the paper and bib
• paper is error free - refs preserve capitalization where necessary
• paper is error free - no invalid refs without justification

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[crvernon]

👋 @costashatz - I just need you to address the following before I accept this for publication:

In the paper:

• LINE 35: These citations should appear as "(Ravichandar et al., 2020; Chatzilygeroudis et al., 2019; Kroemer et al., 2021)" instead of in separate parenthesis.
• LINE 61: "ip" should be captialized.
• LINE 87: "lidars" should be written "LiDAR"
• LINE 121: The "g" in "gazebo" should be capitalized here. You can maintain capitalization in your bib file using curly brackets directly around the characters you wish to maintain formatting for.

Once you have made these changes let me know and I'll move forward with acceptance. Thanks!