Virtual Robot System - Introducing VIRSYS (alpha)

[James Critchley]

Team 302 has been talking about this for a while and a number of poeple at the Championship wanted to see how exactly we were doing this... So here it is!!!

http://www.virsys.org/

VIRSYS (pronounceds "versus" as in "it's the game") is a virtual robot system. It's an emulator that lets you develop and test the hardware independent portions of your software without the robot or CRIO... even before you build it. Basically it runs realistic physics in the background and provides a light weight image generator (graphics) so you can interact with your robot on the field.



This release is setup for those that use LabVIEW, but we're looking for volunteers in the community to apply and demonstrate a similar stub architecture in C++, Java, Python, etc.

This is an ALPHA release, so please be patient and kind. There is very little documentation, but the code (labVIEW) is very clean (perhaps too clean in spots ). This public release is geared towards getting our process out there and seeing if there is interest to continue this project as an open development.

This release is the Dragons' 2011 off season trainer where our new software students will be able to work anytime and anywhere to learn general programming concepts as applied to a real competition robot. The robot is hard coded to a parametric "arm bot" and the graphics are fixed to our speciffic dimensions.

To get started you'll need : Windows, LabVIEW, a joystick or gamepad, Nate Robin's GLUT DLL, and the two files on the virsys.org downloads page.

If you want a quick demonstration of the physics, remove the rocker from the wheels (make the "z" coordinate on all of the wheels the same number in "robot.txt"... perferably "3.0" inches) then re-run and try to turn the robot! Or gradually move the "Chassis Center of Gravity" higher and see how easy it is to flip over. If you take out the friction out of the Arm and zero out the bump stop, you can really get it swinging around. With no friction in the bearing, the trick is making it stop.

Have Fun! And let us know what you think.