[Opensim-dev] Robotics in OpenSim?

[Kyle Hamilton]

I'd like to direct you, also, to
http://www.nonpolynomial.com/archives/2008/04/kinematics-a-less-than-relaxing-hobby.php
(written by Kyle Machulis, aka qDot), and its follow-up posts.  He's
been working with the NovInt Falcon -- essentially, a
three-dimensional force-feedback controller very much akin to a 3D
mouse -- and it's built on 3D robotics technologies.

At the time that he wrote this, he was also Cube Linden, and he was
working on it at least partially in Second Life using nothing more
than the standard client interfaces.

It might be interesting reading.

-Kyle H

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Ben Goertzel <ben at goertzel.org> wrote:
> 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
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