Initializing configuration of soft robot

[jjalora]

Hello!

I was wondering if it was possible to initialize my soft robot to have a specific initial configuration such that after the simulation starts, with no forces applied, the robot tends to its equilibrium configuration.

I have a specific mode shape of the soft robot that I'd like to get trajectory data of, and I'd like to initialize the robot along this specific mode shape.

The only thing I've managed to figure out is to visualize the displacement of the robot by setting the position attribute in MechanicalObject. Unfortunately, when we run the simulation this doesn't accomplish what we want (the position of the robot is fixed there).

The other approach is to do some sort of inverse kinematic procedure to find the forces required to displace my robot along the mode shape, but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't a simpler way to do what I want (also it's ideal that we initialize the robot as close as possible along the mode shape of interest).

I really appreciate the help!
-John

[hugtalbot]

Hi @jjalora

Sorry for the latency of this reply!
A solution could be to initialize your MechanicalObject with two sets of information:

• position data field : the position you want to start from
• restPosition data field : the position corresponding to the undeformed shape of your object (what you called equilibrium)

For this, you should therefore need two loaders loading the two configurations of your object.
Let us know whether this works as expected ;)

[jjalora]

Hi @hugtalbot. I was able to figure this out, but thanks for the answer anyways - I can confirm that this solution works as expected!

While I have your attention, would you mind checking out another question of mine on this thread?

Many thanks!