[ODE] Some hints required(involvind attaching objects)

[Tatu Lahtela]

Hi!

I'm creating a system that uses a 6 degree of freedom haptic
device(Sensable Phantom Desktop) and wer'e creating a virtual enviroment
for it with ODE. Our initial goal is to simulate a "gripper" that moves
with the haptic device and you can use that to grab objects etc..
So the gripper looks initially like this:

 _________________
|                 |
|    _________    |
|   |         |   |
|   /         \   |
|   \         /   |
|   /         \   |
|   \         /   |
\___/         \___/

 -->          <--

The gripper moves freely in the system, and you can close the fork to
grab objects. Any hints on how I should create the gripper and how I
update it's position and rotation in the ODE. It's was relatively easy
to create just a single box that follows the movement of the Phantom,
but how should I create the grippers? Is it possible somehow to update
the position of the grippers attaching them to the top bar with e.g.
sliders and their position and rotation would be updated automatically
after the top bar position is updated? So that pressing the button would
slide the grippers and close the fork.



-- 
Tampere University of Technology / Automation and Control Institute
Tatu Lahtela <lahtela@cs.tut.fi>