[ODE] ode

[Anselm Hook]

This is a good application for ODE.  The only complexity is that you are
effectively driving a virtual system with one way inputs.  Game developers
have a similar problem when they want to have a keyframe animated
animation interacting with physical objects.  The keyframed animation is
incapable of handling feedback.  In your case the hand position data can
get out of sync with human hand position input data.  For example you have
to decide how to deal with cases where the virtual hand is holding an
object and the operator closes their hand into a fist.

One way to do this is to treat the human hand input data as suggested
target positions and to apply forces to your virtual finger joints to try
to satisfy the target position (technically you'll probably do this by
using a motor:)

  http://opende.sourceforge.net/ode-latest-userguide.html#ref56

...but in either case this helps you be a bit more graceful about having
your virtual hand be dynamical even if it can differ from hand positions
the operator may be making.

Your joints and 'bodies' in the hand will act like virtual bones...  and
your mesh geometry can be the skin.  If you appropriately break up your
hand mesh into the right kinds of pieces then ODE can drive the position
of the geometry based on the joint positions...  But I suggest that
instead of using the mesh geometry that you instead just use geometry
primitives supplied by ODE.  You can display a mesh if you wish but
just leave it as visual eye-candy - you can render your mesh using any
skinning algorithm based on the joint and body positions...

This is all a bit of work in fact... you may want to use a modelling tool
like Juice to build your hand.

 - a

Sounds like fun in any case,

 - a

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003, api2551 at cacs.louisiana.edu wrote:

>
>
> Hi,
>    We are doing a project in virtual environments. We have a 22 sensor
> glove and we have virtual hand model(made of triangular meshes) and based
> on the sensor values the different parts of the hand get manipulated. We
> want to have a physics simulation library that can determine the collision
> between the hand and the virtual object and also transform the object based
> on the collision(direction). Can i do this with ODE.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Arun
>
>
>
>
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