Some C++ code examples that formed a small part of a PhD project investigating foot-ground interactions in animal locomotion.
Rigid-body simulations of dynamics are fast and easy to perform, for example using by the physics library (MuJoCo)[https://www.mujoco.org]. However, real animals and robots interact with very complex materials and substrates. While we could model these materials within the simulation environment, it might actually be easier to connect a force-sensing robot to a simulation, and have it physically apply and measure contact forces in real-time with the simulation.
Essentially, I perfomed physics simulation with hardware-in-the-loop contact dynamics in a new interface I called Reverse Haptics.
Read more in the paper here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8452298
E. A. Eberhard and C. T. Richards, “Simulation of muscle-powered jumping with hardware-in-the-loop ground interaction,” in IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), 2018.
ethraw provides utilities for sending and receiving raw ethernet packets
on Mac and Linux, used for low latency interfacing of a simulation PC and
a robotic manipulator.
mujocoToolbox provides useful rendering and calculation utilities for the
physics simulation framework.
simpipe is the main application that runs a multi-body simulation, sends state information over ethernet
to a robot, and applies measured robot forces back into the simulation.