[Opensim-dev] Robotics in OpenSim?

[Ben Goertzel]

Hello OpenSimmers ...

I am interested in the possibility of using OpenSim to have
human-controlled avatars
interact with realistically-controlled simulations of robots.
Furthermore, I **may** have
found a way to get a couple people to do actual work to enable this, under my
supervision... (they would be at a Chinese university ... long story...)

Question is whether it's feasible or not.

My thought is to integrate the Player framework

http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/

into OpenSim somehow.  They have a 3D sim framework called Gazebo, and I thought
of somehow integrating aspects of Gazebo w/ OpenSim, but on reflection
probably the
best option is just to hook Player up to OpenSim to that in effect
OpenSim replaces
Gazebo.

Hooking Player up to OpenSim would seem to require work on both the client
and server side.

On the server side, Player is C whereas OpenSim is C# but this seems
unproblematic
as the two can communicate via sockets.  The question is whether
OpenSim is open to
having the skeleton of a character controlled by some external process
(which would
simulate a servomotor attached to each joint) rather than controlled
by a fixed set of
animations.   I suppose the situation where Player controls a skeleton
is not that
fundamentally different from the one where a skeleton is controlled by
some inverse
kinematics equations or what-not.

On the client side, again, things are different if the robot is not
controlled by a fixed
set of animations.  Could this be handled by adding a client-side
plug-in to RealXTend
or some other viewer?

What I'm looking for is an indication of whether OpenSim experts think this is
a generally feasible direction; and if so, any clues on the best technical
approach.

I have more experience with Second Life and Multiverse than OpenSim.

Thanks
Ben


-- 
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Research, SIAI
ben at goertzel.org

"If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they
will surely become worms."
-- Henry Miller