out of interest Blender for Robotics

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

I saw this article http://www.blendernation.com/2016/08/28/blender-amazon-picking-challenge-2016/
where blender was used to train robots

In my past job I myself used Blender to to prototype machines / robotic machines, and i’ve made some robotic control software.

And it got me thinking, we’ve seen blender become one of the best mesh editors, and a favorite tool for 3d printing.
We’ve also got some other tools at hand, to mix video with blender models.

So i kinda wonder, what would blender need to jumpstart opensource robotics?
What would be the new 3d areas there, needed to be added to blender.
Blender to robotics, might be like what was once arduino to quadcopters.

(most likely not direct I/O control as that can be done with arduino).
But likely some new video tricks ?, camera support ?, … ?
, … ? and … ?

curious what you people would fill into the dots

2

Interesting, thanks for the link! :wink:

I understand that blender was used only to generate data and allow an artificial system to learn patterns.

I think another useful approach to robotics could be just the inverse thing that is doing in some animations, so have the robot model, move it in the application and make a real robot do the same, or eg, repeat a recorded movements. I think this would not be so difficult, and could be done via python.

3

Yes i’ve seen a few projects in that area, i’ve been discussing this with some asian professor who had a face robot driven by blender, i lost contact though, but that surely is one of the options.

python can do serial IO and thats enought to control an arduino based stepper motor.

4

you can use IK as a template and then use force applications and feedback to try and match it,

so send signal to motor -> next frame where am I vs bone -> send signal to BGE -> repeat

if you use procedural systems to write the IK…

we need BT_MultiBody in bge and BPY

5

Wow you amaze me each time, did you just created a walking ragdoll ?? … is it an addon ?
whats next crowd simulations ? :eyebrowlift2:

6

its actually based of work originaly done by a ba user Jakii

I have just been trying to tame it :slight_smile:

7

Ok - there is an addon -
https://github.com/dfki-ric/phobos to generate URDF from blender armatures

we could then initiate them in bullet I think but we need more wrapping
bt_multibody

this is then ready to do stuff like this I think -

image
image1865×1036 176 KB

or it may also require a little more wrapping or work in py to get it humming