RoR as Visualization of a Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulator ?

[ZAP]

Hi RoR-Community,

I'm working with a Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulator of a heavy truck. This means, the control units
of this truck are the real ones and the rest of the truck (the sensors, the engine, the actuators,
the behaviour, the wheels, ...) is simulated with a real-time software. This software has outputs
for accelerator pedal, break pedal, gearshift and steering wheel which are sent over TCP/IP from
the simulator to a host PC.

Is it possible to use ROR as visualization of this simulator? The manual user input would be replaced
by the data coming from the TCP/IP connection of the simulator.

Any ideas?

Regards,
ZAP

[tdev]

I'm working with a Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulator of a heavy truck. This means, the control units
of this truck are the real ones and the rest of the truck (the sensors, the engine, the actuators,
the behaviour, the wheels, ...) is simulated with a real-time software. This software has outputs
for accelerator pedal, break pedal, gearshift and steering wheel which are sent over TCP/IP from
the simulator to a host PC.

Is it possible to use ROR as visualization of this simulator? The manual user input would be replaced
by the data coming from the TCP/IP connection of the simulator.

Any ideas?

hi and welcome to the forums! you have an interesting work!
i will ask pricorde about that but IMO it would be better to write a program that receives the tcp/ip control data and transforms it into keystrokes (or joystik movements) for RoR. That would not been so complicated and it would be more compatible without increasing the complexity of RoR.

[ZAP]

Hi,

I have found 2 features of RoR that sounds perhaps interesting: multi-player mode and scripting via LUA.
Is it possible to use them for my idea?

Regards,
ZAP.

[Sweetman]

Hi,

I have found 2 features of RoR that sounds perhaps interesting: multi-player mode and scripting via LUA.
Is it possible to use them for my idea?

Regards,
ZAP.

I guess so, I'm sure there is some sort of Position/Rotation use in the Lua scripting system.

[tdev]

I have found 2 features of RoR that sounds perhaps interesting: multi-player mode and scripting via LUA.
Is it possible to use them for my idea?

adding controller input via the lua system is a nice idea, that could also solve some other problems. i will think about if it is possible.

I guess so, I'm sure there is some sort of Position/Rotation use in the Lua scripting system.

not really atm

[pricorde]

Hi RoR-Community,

I'm working with a Hardware-in-the-Loop-Simulator of a heavy truck. This means, the control units
of this truck are the real ones and the rest of the truck (the sensors, the engine, the actuators,
the behaviour, the wheels, ...) is simulated with a real-time software. This software has outputs
for accelerator pedal, break pedal, gearshift and steering wheel which are sent over TCP/IP from
the simulator to a host PC.

Is it possible to use ROR as visualization of this simulator? The manual user input would be replaced
by the data coming from the TCP/IP connection of the simulator.

Any ideas?

If I understand well your aim, I'm not sure RoR is fit for what you want to do. RoR is primarily a one-of-a-kind real-time physical simulator, so if you already have a physical simulator this removes a big part of the interest of using RoR (unless if you want to do co-simulation).
Then, one problem is that, contrary to all other rigid body sims, vehicles shapes are tightly controlled by the physics engine. So without this engine you can't make a vehicle move around because its not "embodied" by the very specific soft-body physics of RoR.

Depending on what you want to do (and if I understood well that you already have a full rigid body physics engine), your possibilities are :
-Wait for the next network-enabled version of RoR, and write a network client that will transpose your physical rigid body model to point maps for the visualisation in RoR (I can help you).
-Discuss with me for the adaptation of RoR to a visualization-only, physics-less mode.
-Write from scratch a visualization program using Ogre3D ( http://www.ogre3d.org/ ), which is the 3D library I use, and is at the same time very simple to use for any C++ developer and very powerful.

Anyway I'm very happy to know that RoR can attract heavy-machinery simulation professionals.

Regards,
PM