# Integrated Robotic and Network Simulation Method
## 2 Related Work  
The use of methods to guide simulation studies is a well-known topic for general system modelling. Works in this domain, as reviewed in [22], concentrate on providing lifecycle workflows and guides for best practices during simulation development. The main idea, common to these methods, is to set the study in several sequential stages consisting of: 1. Planning, problem modelling and documentation; 2. Simulation implementation; 3. Simulation validation; and 4. Experimentation and Analysis. The last two steps are subjects of Validation, Verification, and Test (VV&T) techniques [24], which are often used for establishing the credibility of the simulation study [15]. These works are suitable as a general guideline for common simulation studies, although they do not contemplate applications particularities, lack technical depth and are harder to apply when dealing with complex simulations. These characteristics motivated the appearance of new research lines to deal, for example, with agents in Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) [21; 22; 25]. ABMSappeared as a reaction to the lack of formal basis in simulation studies, incomplete documentation and missing results reproducibility [21; 25]. However, as the concept of agent can appear in a wide selection of applications, related works tend to focus on common aspects but only on specific topics inside a simulation development lifecycle, e.g., choosing a validation technique for agent-based simulation [21], proposing a formal modelling process [25], or a formal documenting process [23]. Even though the above-mentioned methods, procedures and recommendations give important and useful insights about building a simulation study, there is another consideration that should be taken into account when working with an integrated simulation of a cooperative robots team and its communication network, i.e.,: it is a cross-domain simulation. The work in eRobotics [6], a branch from eSystem Engineering, deals specifically with this type of situation. At first, eRobotics targets the development of methods and concepts, refining engineering processes and using semantic modeling techniques, to provide the necessary models for a robot 3D simulation. With this basis, a Virtual Testbed is built, consisting of a 3D simulation software environment for the integrated cross-domain development of complex systems based on 3D models. In another work related to eRobotics methodology [16], the authors combine the concept of Virtual Testbeds with another approach from industry, namely the notion of Digital Twins, which consists of real world objects with a corresponding virtual representation capable of communication and acting as intelligent node in the Internet of Things. The authors use the resulting Experimentable Digital Twins as a core of the simulation-based development process, enabling detailed simulations at system level and realizing intelligent systems focused on 3D modeling of physical aspects of a robot. These works are examples of methods used in robotics with the objective of improving robot simulation characteristics, but in a different scope with respect to the work proposed in this paper. Here, for a cooperative robotics simulation, the communication network is the object of interest and robots detailed physical properties assume lower relevance [13]. Cooperative robotics and network simulation received more attention in recent years as the development of network simulators advanced, enabling the implementation of complex interactions inside the network simulator [1] and enabling cross-simulator communication [12]. Researches into using this type of simulation are sparsely distributed along several lines, with the most recent ones concentrating on Networked Robotic Systems (NRS) [20] and Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) [11]. Another approach to deal with cooperative robots and networks is to use hardware and software tools to enable assembling and studying swarms of general-purpose robotic systems [26].