Simulate a climb robot on a steel bridge using magnetic force

Official Python bindings with a focus on reinforcement learning and robotics.
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hainh22
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2021 4:40 am

Simulate a climb robot on a steel bridge using magnetic force

Post 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!
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maiklof
Posts: 24
Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2013 10:01 am

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

Post 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.
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