Project Chrono
Project Chrono is a physics engine developed by University of Parma, University of Wisconsin-Madison and members of its open source community. It supports simulating rigid and soft body dynamics, collision detection, vehicle dynamics, fluid-solid interaction, deformable terrain, and granular dynamics, among other physical systems. The latest developments are in the area of sensor simulation, robotics simulation, human-autonomous agent interaction (real-time simulation), and autonomous vehicle simulation, where the emphasis is on off-road scenarios. Parts of the code run on the GPU, multi-core CPUs, and distributed memory architectures via MPI. It is used at tens of universities, in industry, and federal research labs.
| Developer(s) | Alessandro Tasora, Radu Serban, Dan Negrut et al.[1][2] |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1998 |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | github |
| Written in | C, C++ |
| Operating system | Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X |
| Type | Multi-physics engine |
| License | BSD License |
| Website | projectchrono |
History
Project Chrono was initially developed for use as a multibody simulation tool for robotics and biomechanics applications by Alessandro Tasora while a student at the Polytechnic University of Milan.[4] This became a joint University of Wisconsin-University of Parma project as of 2008.
The project was released under a BSD License in 2013.[4]
In 2014 the United States Army invested US$1,800,000 to fund the library's development over a two-year period.[5] The project is under active development, current project sponsors include the US Army Research Office, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and Department of Transportation. Project Chrono is used by the US Army for simulating wheeled and tracked vehicles, and used for a NASA-sponsored project for the 2023 lunar mission of the VIPER rover.