Wanna fun robot simulator? I recommend you download a robot simulator from Luiz Felipe Rudge Encarnacao. It includes an untethered mobile gripper with 5 degrees of movement in a 3-D room of objects and a toy airplane flying around in the same room. This is a Windows program that runs well on a Pentium and doesn’t lose its usefulness on a double speed 486.
The graphics are simple but versatile. The full motion illustrated robot and airplace are wire-frame b&w line art. The simulator instructions are context-available in a box below the action, and are simple to follow. The camera views available are really a must-see, since they give you 17 different angles to aim your pickup and delivery of the objects. Beware, however, that since some of the cameras are attached to the orbiting airplane, a few of the views can give you vertigo if you stare at them long enough.
Move the robot using your arrow keys.
And yes, the robot can grab the plane. But beware, the robot moves itself into grabbing position by calculating the last known position of the object. (I’ll let you figure it out.) The airplane is controlled by keypad arrows (numbers 2, 4, 6 & 8) and velocity (also backwards!) is controlled using the plus and minus keys. The number 5 fires a rocket!
I’d use this simulator as a diversion, like a game, though there is no score to keep. The documentation has recently been translated to English. I’d like to see Luiz publish some of the programming code so others can write simulators as clever as this one. Listening, Luiz?
Download, unzip and GO. For those who haven’t driven a simulator before, or for those wanting to experience a new challenge, I recommend you get the RoboSim from our LINKS page and give it a try. Downloading takes only a minute or two depending on the time of day, your modem, and your luck with Tron, the god of electronic transmissions along the Internet. Unzip the 100Kb file and run it on MS Windows.
About the programmer: Luiz is a 27-year-old systems developer, a graduate of the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro. He wrote the simulator in C++ as a university project.