Re: Robot kinematics/dynamics with Blender...

On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, Zbynek Winkler wrote:

[...]
> I know close to nothing about Blender but for sometime now I have been 
> considering Crystal Space [1] graphics engine together with ODE (open 
> dynamic engine) [2] for 3D related robotic tasks. And since I do not 
> have the time to do it I was planning to put some students on it :-). 

I know both projects for quite some time already. CrystalSpace is not
that advanced in kinematics of "creatures"; ODE is complementary to
the dynamics algorithms in robotics: it starts from independent rigid
bodies, that can be constrained to form articulted links. This is not
so efficient.
So, my personal opinion is that neither of these projects have much to
offer to Orocos. I can be mistaken, of course :-)

[...]
> http://paradox.tosos.com/~duhprey/robot/
Doesn't seem to be more than a (abandoned?) student's project...

> http://nimble3d.sourceforge.net/
Same thing...

> http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/~shapiro/Papers/sansha03a.pdf
The scope of this research is still a bit too far away from the
current focus of Orocos (which is low-level infrastructure).

> http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~curt/research.html
Same thing... Player/Stage is a better project for them to participate
in.

> http://www.auvsi.org/competitions/2002/papers/EcoledeechnologieSuperieure.pdf
> 
These people use Microb <http://www.robotique.ireq.ca/microb/>, which
is a robotics project with not too much information about its currents
status, development or license...

Thanks for the feedback!

Herman

-- 
  K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://people.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 322480