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Simulate a climb robot on a steel bridge using magnetic force

Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:41 am
by hainh22
Is it possible to simulate the above thing using PyBullet? My robot is a robot with 2 wheels (like in the figure) that stick to the surface of a bridge using magnets. My idea is to add two custom forces on the two wheels but how to adjust/calculate the direction of the forces to be perpendicular to the bridge surface to simulate the magnetic forces?

Thanks!

Re: Simulate a climb robot on a steel bridge using magnetic force

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 10:00 am
by maiklof
I have played a bit with negative forces to simulate magnets and it can work pretty well if you adjust the forces and masses properly.
I would suggest you to use a customMaterialCallback to apply forces using the contact normals, by I wonder if it is possible to implement customMaterialCallbacks in python. Myself I do it in C++.
Another option, but I don't know if it may work for you, is to get the rotation of the robot and apply the forces according to that instead. It wonät be that accurate, but it may work if there are no big obstacles.