I am attempting to simulate a bucket/boom system such as is found on Wheel Loader vehicles used in construction and mining, using bullet
rigid bodies and constraints.
These vehicles typically have a bucket, which is connected to the body of the vehicle via a boom, which raises it up and down, and
an actuator which is a hydraulic cylinder/piston which pushes forward or pulls backward to rotate the bucket around the pivot
created by the boom.
Something like this :
[I see the formatting was all messed up, I have attached a picture] Where = is the boom, - is the actuator, and the triangle is the bucket.
Currently I am creating a rigid body for the boom, which is connected to the vehicle body via a hinge constraint.
I then connect the bucket and the boom via a hinge constraint too. This works fine, as expected.
However when I attempt to add the actuator, it all goes wrong. I add a rigidbody for the actuator as well,
and then connect this rigid body to the vehicle body via a hinge constraint. I then connect the actuator
rigid body to the bucket via a 6dof constraint that allows for movement on the z axis. I use the point
at the top of the bucket where the actuator connects to the bucket as the pivot for both rigid bodies in
this constraint. I enable the motors of the boom and 6dof in order to simulate the movement.
The results I am getting are quite hard to make sense of. It seems as though the constraints are simply being violated.
I will post some code and some pictures if you guys think that will help, but first of all, does my solution make sense?
Am I missing something or should this setup work. If so, the problem may lie elsewhere, with my pivot positions or
setup of the constraints ..
I've been at this for more than a week now and just can't seem to crack it.
Any help will be *greatly* appreciated
Thanks