How to Use Player/Stage

5th Edition

Using Player 3.0.2 and Stage 4.1.1 (latest stable versions)

Kevin Nickels and Jennifer Owen

7 July 2015

A user manual for the Player/Stage robot simulator.

This document is intended as a guide for anyone learning Player/Stage for the first time. It explains the process of setting up a new simulation environment and how to then make your simulation do something, using a case study along the way. Whilst it is aimed at Player/Stage users, those just wishing to use Player on their robot may also find sections of this document useful (particularly the parts about coding with Player).

If you have any questions about using Player/Stage there is a guide to getting help from the Player community at http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/wiki/Getting_help

This edition of the manual uses Stage version 4.1.1. As there are significant differences with the previous versions of Stage and the previous edition of this manual is now out of date. They are available at

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Introduction
  2. The Basics
  3. Building a World
  4. Writing a Configuration (.cfg) File
  5. Getting Your Simulation to Run Your Code
  6. Controllers (C++)
  7. Controllers (C)
  8. Controllers (Py-libplayercpp)
  9. Controllers (Py-libplayerc)

Change Log

  • 7 Aug 2015 released v4.1.0 covering stable versions
  • 30 June 2015 updating markdown for readthedocs.org
  • 18 May 2015 began migration from LaTeX to MARKDOWN on GitHub
  • August 2013 updated manual to Stage 4.1.1
  • 1st August 2013 Source code made available online
  • 16th April 2010 updated manual to Stage 3.2.2
  • 10th July 2009 original manual covering Stage versions 2.1.1 and 3.1.0