[ODE] Self Righting Boxes (on castors)

[Filipe Dias]

I remember seeing (in the buggy demo) a force being aplyed upwards to one 
of the corners of the box while we were pressing the backspace key. but 
that isn't an automatic way to straighten things up, since it is aplied 
for as long as the key is down...

What I am remembering now is that you can do something archimedes-like 
and fix a balloon some distance above the boxes.. when they go upside-
down you would fill the baloon and it would turn the box over..  An up 
force aplied some distance over the center of the box. This is obviosly 
not as funny as an explosion-like effect where the box would spin a 
number of times an land straigt up.. but trying to turn boxes arround 
with explosions may take quite a lot of attepts to do it right!.. :-)

Fil.


-----Original Message-----
From: Ed Jones <ed.jones@oracle.com>
To: ode@q12.org
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 17:15:41 +0000
Subject: [ODE] Self Righting Boxes (on castors)

> Hi Folks,
> 
> I'm building a "simulation" which consists of a load of boxes on
> castors 
> which I can push around (don't ask!).
> 
> The boxes are (fairly obviously) boxes and the castors are 4 spheres 
> attached to each box with ball joints. I can click on the boxes to give
> them forces and hence push them around the floor. Which is just a
> ground 
> plane, with other boxes and spheres on it. So far so good.
> 
> The "castorbox people" fall over quite regularly, which is fine and all
> part of the "fun". But what I'd like to do is, after a couple of
> seconds 
> of lying down, get them to spring back up to their feet of their own 
> accord. Obviously I can just reset the little fella to be the right way
> up but I'd like it to look more like they're jumping back up
> themselves.
> 
> Anyone got any ideas of what would be a good (and preferably simple!) 
> way to achieve this?
> 
> Cheers,
> Ed.
> 
> 
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