6.5 Saving and Reading Map Files
When you have built up a virtual environment using the BeeSoft Simulator’s graphical interface, you might want to save that environment description, or map, in order to use it for further study or research, or to refine it to make it more precise. To do this, click on the Save button. You’ll be asked to specify a filename of a file in which you’d like your map saved. Then, when you run the Simulator at a later time, use the run time parameter map {filename} and that map will automatically be loaded and displayed.
In This Chapter You’ve Learned...
...how to use the BeeSoft Simulator, a flexible and useful research tool with an easy-to-use graphical interface that lets you create any number of complex virtual environments in which a simulated robot, whose behavior closely mimics that of an actual, physical robot, can navigate and maneuver. You’ve seen how you can save these maps for later research and refinement, and how you can edit the map files themselves in order to render them even more precise representations of actual, real-world situations.
You’ve also learned that, however valuable and suggestive of reality the Simulator is as an adjunct to your robotics research, it’s not a substitute for working with an actual, physical robot.
