The launcher can now spawn two `ShepherdDog` robots, each masked to a
single axis of motion, so the herding workload is split orthogonally.
Mechanic:
* `HERDING_NDOGS=2` (default 1) tells `tools/run_webots.sh` to replace
the single-dog node in the generated test world with two copies:
- `ShepherdDogX` at (-4, -10), `customData "axis=x"`
- `ShepherdDogY` at (+4, -10), `customData "axis=y"`
Each spawn position sits south of the field interior so the pair
doesn't collide with starting sheep.
* `controllers/shepherd_dog/shepherd_dog.py` reads `getCustomData()`
at startup; when `axis=x|y` it zeroes the off-axis component of every
action *after* speed modulation and *before* EMA smoothing. With
`customData` empty the controller behaves identically to single-dog
mode, so all existing launches are unaffected.
* The dog's emitter line now carries the robot's name
(`dog:ShepherdDogX:x:y`), and `controllers/sheep/sheep.py` keeps a
`dogs` dict keyed by name, picking the closest one each step for
its flee target. Single-dog runs still use the legacy two-field
`dog:x:y` format thanks to a length check.
* `HERDING_NDOGS` is written into `herding_runtime.cfg` and exported
to subprocesses so future tooling can read it.
Verified behaviour in Webots smoke tests (HERDING_NDOGS=2, strombom,
diff/field, 5 sheep): both dogs spawn with the expected names and
axis tags, the dual-dog status print appears, each dog acts only on
its assigned axis early in the trial, and the masking is internally
consistent. The pair stalls before penning under pure axis-split
because each dog reaches its drive standoff and then has only one
degree of freedom — useful research finding for the write-up;
coordination strategy (shared CoM, role-switching, etc.) is future
work.
126 pytest cases still pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Johnny Fernandes
cfbf4a0267