A simple browser-based hexapod robot simulator built from first principles

️ Mithi's Hexapod Robot Simulator

• A bare minimum browser-based hexapod robot simulator built from first principles ️
• If you like this project, consider buying me a few :coffee: cups of coffee . :two_hearts:

STATUS FEATURE DESCRIPTION :tada: Forward Kinematics Given the angles of each joint, what does the robot look like? :tada: Inverse Kinematics What are the angles of each joint to make the robot look the way I want? Is it even possible? Why or why not? :tada: Uniform Movements If all of the legs behaved the same way, how will the hexapod robot as a whole behave? :tada: Customizability Set the dimensions and shape of the robot's body and legs. (6 parameters) :tada: Usability Control the camera view, pan, tilt, zoom, whatever. :tada: Simplicity Minimal dependencies. Depends solely on Numpy for calculations. Uses only Plotly Dash for plotting, Dash can be safely replaced if a better 3d plotting library is available. :exclamation: Stability Check (WIP) If we pose the robot in a particular way, will it fall over? :exclamation: Fast Okay, it's not as fast as I wanted, but when run locally, it's okay :exclamation: Bug-free Fine, right now there's still room for improvement :exclamation: Well-tested Yeah, I need to compile test cases first

️ Preview

️ Requirements

• Python 3.8.1
• Plotly Dash 1.10.0
• Plotly Dash Daq 0.4.0
• Numpy 1.18.1
• See also ./requirements.txt

Run

$ python index.py
Running on http://127.0.0.1:8050/

• Modify default settings with ./settings.py
• Dark Mode is the default - modify page styles with ./style_settings.py

:warning: Known Issues

• :exclamation: Priorities
• :exclamation: Help Wanted
• :exclamation: Bugs
• :exclamation: All

️ Conventions and Algorithms

• Definitions
  • Linkage
  • VirtualHexapod
• The Inverse Kinematics Algorithm used for this project
• How to find the ground contact points, tilt, and height of the hexapod
• How to make the hexapod step on the correct target ground contacts
• How to determine if the hexapod should twist and by how much
  • find_if_might_twist
  • find_twist_frame

️ Screenshots

️ Notes

• :exclamation: Now live on https://hexapod-robot-simulator.herokuapp.com ! BUT (and a big one) I highly suggest that you run it locally. When run locally, it's pretty speedy! On the other hand, the link above is barely usable. Might convert this to to be a fully client-side Javascript app later, maybe?

• :exclamation: This implementation uses matrices, NOT quaternions. I'm aware that quaternions is far superior in every single way. In the (un)forseeable future, maybe?

• :exclamation: Frankly, My IK algorithm isn't all that great, it's just something I came up with based on what I remember back in college plus browsing through the Mathematics Stack Exchange . It might not be the best, but it's the most intuitive that I can think of. If you want something closer to the state-of-the-art, maybe checkout Unity's Fast IK or ROS IKFast .

• I believe that the idea that it's best to be kind to one another shouldn't be controversial. And I shouldn't be afraid to say that.

Contributors

• @mithi
• @philippeitis