NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

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brtietz
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:39 am

NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by brtietz »

I am pleased to announce the open source release of the NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit (NTRT), which uses Bullet 2.82 for physics.

Tensegrity Robots are a biologically inspired approach to building robots based on the tension networks of tensegrity structures, which have no rigid connections between elements. The NTRT was created to enable the rapid co-exploration of structures and controls in a physics based simulation environment.

Videos of our results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR0AlIwEgSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyt7B7-OebI

Feedback is welcome! This is our first beta release, so the library will be maturing significantly over the next few months. Our development roadmap and source code are available on Github

Brian
ashort
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2014 1:02 am

Re: NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by ashort »

I am trying to get the NTRT to install on a computer to do some preliminary work for grant writing (I am a grad student at Colorado School of Mines)
And am having trouble getting it to work. Does it require Bullet Physics 2.82, or will it work with 3.0+ versions, which is what I have installed.

Thanks
Adam R. Short
brtietz
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:39 am

Re: NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by brtietz »

Adam,

(Sounds like you got it working: https://github.com/NASA-Tensegrity-Robo ... /issues/85)

By default, we install Bullet 2.82 with our setup.sh script. If you're interested in helping us upgrade to Bullet 3, let us know!

Brian
Moose
Posts: 31
Joined: Mon Nov 04, 2013 10:58 am

Re: NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by Moose »

brtietz wrote:Adam,

(Sounds like you got it working: https://github.com/NASA-Tensegrity-Robo ... /issues/85)

By default, we install Bullet 2.82 with our setup.sh script. If you're interested in helping us upgrade to Bullet 3, let us know!

Brian
Hi Brian,

I hope you still read this response. Are you aware of the fact that migration to bullet3 will imply suddenly having hardware requirements in terms of high end GPUs?
I would be glad to be able to help with the migration myself but sadly, I don't have such hardware. Yet. If that changes I will have a crack at it if you really want to have it done.

Cheers,
Moose
brtietz
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 12:39 am

Re: NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by brtietz »

Moose,

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've finally subscribed to this topic so I'll be a little more prompt in the future.

We are aware of how disruptive the change would be, and it is therefore not a high priority at the moment. In the future, we may need the GPU pipeline to simulate extremely large structures (i.e. tensegrity as the biomechanics for a complete organism), so we'll be looking at it more seriously in a year or two.

Let us know if you're still interested in contributing in the near term.

Brian
TammySamons
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2016 8:56 am

Re: NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit

Post by TammySamons »

UPD. 2016

NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit (NTRT) v1

Tensegrity robots have many unique properties useful for robots intended to operate in natural settings, yet the exploration of how to build and control such robots is just beginning. Many of their positive qualities, such as multipath force distribution, compliance, and their oscillatory nature, also make them very challenging for traditional control approaches.

The NASA Tensegrity Robotics Toolkit (NTRT) is an open-source collection of C++ and MATLAB software modules for the modeling, simulation, and control of Tensegrity robots. Tensegrity robots are a biologically inspired approach to building robots based on the tension networks of tensegrity structures, which have no rigid connections between elements. The NTRT was created to enable the rapid co-exploration of structures and controls in a physics-based simulation environment; the development of tensegrity robotics algorithms such as structural analysis, kinematics, and motion planning; and the validation of the algorithms and controls on hardware prototypes of the tensegrity robots.

The NTRT comprises the following modules: The NTRT Simulator Core Module (integrates with physics engine and provides tensegrity specific classes and abstractions), the NTRT Tensegrity Builder Module (provides support tools for constructing tensegrity structures), the NTRT Models and Controllers Library (library of specific tensegrity robot models and associated controllers), the NTRT Kinematics Module (provides kinematic and other analytic tools), the NTRT Motion Planning Module (provides motion planning tools), the NTRT Learning Module (provides a framework for learning new controllers and parameter tuning), and the NTRT Hardware Interface Module (provides adaptors and tools to interface with hardware prototypes).

NTRT is designed to work with the free open-source Bullet Physics Engine in order to provide a physics-based simulation environment for the evaluation of new tensegrity robot structures and controls. The NTRT may be downloaded at: http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/tech/asr/intelli ... grity/ntrt.

This work was done by Terrence Fong of Ames Research Center, Vytas SunSpiral of SGT Inc., Brian Tietz of Case Western Reserve University, Steven J. Burt of Universities Space Research, and Atil Iscen of The Regents of The University of California Santa Cruz. NASA invites companies to inquire about partnering opportunities. Contact the Ames Technology Partnerships Office at 1-855-627-2249 or ARC-TechTransfer@mail.nasa.gov. Refer to ARC-17093-1.

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My physics solvers:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... sicssolver
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/cgi/physdemoc.cgi
http://yourhomeworkhelp.org/do-my-physics-homework/
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