I would like to implement 2D liquid simulator using GPU. I'm looking for some "simple" algorithm, that can be ported to GPU. I have this for GPU computing class. I have chosen this, because I find it very interesting. But I'm not as good in physics as I'm in programming. What do you suggest? Should I choose something else :-), or is there something I can do?
You could look into Lennard-Jones Fluids. It should be rather straight forward to implement.
What aspect of liquid behaviour do you want to simulate? The answer will entirely depend on what you intend to achieve; otherwise you're likely to end up with a monstrously complicated solution that's accurate in many situations.
Related
I'm building a solution to fit a number of objects most efficiently into a box. I hope to implement more efficient algorithms soon, but to start out with I'm going to use the brute force method, checking every possible position. This is fine for now since the box is small, with a very few number of items. Later, the complexity will grow.
I'm using Unity to allow the user to see how the items ultimately fit in the box. My initial thought was to also use Unity's physics and collision detection to implement the best fit algorithm; but, with a huge potential number of locations and positions to check, is this a bad approach? Am I much better off running my algorithm in a data structure instead? A 10x10x10 box with even three 1x1x1 objects have almost a billion possible positions...
I'm new to Unity so any advice is welcome; thanks!
Update: right, so this problem is definitely in the bin-packing set of problems, which I know is NP hard. I'm assuming a rectangular box, filled with rectangular box-shaped items of random dimensions.
My question is...
My question is: given my particular algorithm, when we ask, "is there currently something in this x,y,z space?" would it be more efficient to figure that out via code, or to use Unity objects with collision-detection.
Based on the answers I've seen, I can see using Unity would be profoundly inefficient.
If you LITERALLY want to know:
"is there currently something in this x,y,z space?"
the best possible way to do that, is to simply use Unity's engine. So, you trivially check the AABB to see if a point is inside it (or perhaps just check for intersection). You can use one of many
I understand that the question "is there currently something in this x,y,z space?" is or could be one important part of whatever solution you are planning. And indeed the best way to do that is to let Unity's engine do that. It's absolutely impossible you or I could write anything as efficient -- to begin with it comes right off the quaternion cloud in the GPU.
That is the actual answer to what you have now stated is your specific question.
Now regarding the more general issue, which I first fully explained when that was the question you were asking :)
Here are some of my thoughts on trivial "box packing" algorithms in 2D, at the level useful in video games.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/35228592/294884
Regarding 3D "box packing" it's absolutely impossible to offer any guidance unless you include a screen shot of what you are trying to do and fully explain the shapes and constraints involved.
If you are a matheatician and looking for the latest in algorithmic thinking on the matter, just google something like "3d box packing algorithm"
example , example
Again, readers here have utterly no clue what shapes/etc you are dealing with, so please click Edit and explain!
Note too that sphere packing is a really fascinating scientific problem, if that's what you are talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-packing_of_equal_spheres
I recently got interested in Theo Jensen's strandbeest, (If you haven't seen them before look them up! Such incredible engineering.) and I want to mess around with the design he has for his strandbeests' legs. However doing straight forward kinematics is waaay over my head for something like this.
Here's what I'm trying to model:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Strandbeest-Walking-Animation.gif
(Can't link directly because I don't have enough reputation :/)
All I really need to know is the path of the 'foot', so something visual isn't necessary.
The final goal is to be able to apply an evolutionary algorithm to it and see if I come up with the same linkage lengths as Theo did, or maybe improve them somehow, so if I there was some software that allowed scripts to be run, that'd be ideal.
Sorry if the question is kind of vague, I'm not all that sure what I'm looking for. Even if there is some maths/engineering topic that would make this easier I'd love to learn.
Thanks!
-Oisin.
Well, I searched for Physics Engine, and found a promising result.
Open Dynamics Engine seems to be an open source physics engine that could fit your needs.
The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE) is a free, industrial quality library for simulating articulated rigid body dynamics. Proven applications include simulating ground vehicles, legged creatures, and moving objects in VR environments. It is fast, flexible and robust, and has built-in collision detection.
Source: Wiki Introduction
There site is ode.org, and it looks like you should be able to evaluate it from there. "[S]imulating rigid body dynamics" is what you want, right? From what I understand, it ought to fit the bill. C++ is probably a reasonable language to attempt this in. I presume you have previous programming experience? This is not what I would consider a beginner's project.
When you get to the evolution, search for Genetic Algorithms. They're frequently used for optimization, and could help you out considerably. Another thing to consider is what you're actually optimizing for (lowest wind speed to function, fasted movement, etc).
For my computer vision class, I'm going to be doing a project where I extract information about a hallway based on an image of that hallway. In particular, the lines of the hallway which extend toward a vanishing point will be of interest. My question is whether I should use Matlab, OpenCV, or something else to implement this.
I don't have a ton of time for this project. This fact makes Matlab seem like a good option since it seems you can usually get things up and running quickly there. On the other hand, I hope to take what I do for this class project and extend it out further for research once the class is complete. This makes OpenCV seem better as (from what I've read) it's much more efficient. It's possible another choice would be to implement it in Matlab for the project than port that code to an OpenCV form later. It should be noted that I have plenty of experience with C/C++, but only a little in both Matlab and OpenCV.
At the moment, I'm leaning toward just using OpenCV from the start. However, I would like the opinion of someone who's had a bit more experience here than myself. If you'd recommend something over both OpenCV and Matlab, please say so. Also, if you have any tips on what packages or toolkits might be useful for such a project, they would be greatly appreciated.
Any suggestions? Thanks for your time!
Using which one it is easier for you to write a piece of code to read an image file and display it?
If you know C++ very well, then it should be easy to debug the code. Since you say you have little experience with Matlab, if you make a small mistake in the code debugging can take a long time.
So I suggest break down the problem into:
read image and display it, this is very easy in both
detect edges using a simple/classic method, this is super easy in both, display the result and visually check it's correctly done
use a robust line fitting method, the RANSAC and Hough transform methods are probably what you're going to use, OpenCV makes using the easier than you can guess, Matlab also has built in functions to detect lines using the Hough transform, and gives you the start/end points of each segment. But if you're finding a vanishing point, you shouldn't need those.
The decision is yours, this is not a very difficult problem, can find loads of help on the web. Good luck with the project, and please let us know how it goes.
For a while I've been attempting to simulate flowing water with algorithms I've scavenged from "Real-Time Fluid Dynamics for Games". The trouble is I don't seem to get out water-like behavior with those algorithms.
Myself I guess I'm doing something wrong and that those algorithms aren't all suitable for water-like fluids.
What am I doing wrong with these algorithms? Are these algorithms correct at all?
I have the associated project in bitbucket repository. (requires gletools and newest pyglet to run)
Voxel-based solutions are fine for simulating liquids, and are frequently used in film.
Ron Fedkiw's website gives some academic examples - all of the ones there are based on a grid. That code underpins many of the simulations used by Pixar and ILM.
A good source is also Robert Bridson's Fluid Simulation course notes from SIGGRAPH and his website. He has a book "Fluid Simulation for Computer Graphics" that goes through developing a liquid simulator in detail.
The most specific answer I can give to your question is that Stam's real-time fluids for games is focused on smoke, ie. where there isn't a boundary between the fluid (water), and an external air region. Basically smoke and liquids use the same underlying mechanism, but for liquid you also need to track the position of the liquid surface, and apply appropriate boundary conditions on the surface.
Cem Yuksel presented a fantastic talk about his Wave Particles at SIGGRAPH 2007. They give a very realistic effect for quite a low cost. He was even able to simulate interaction with rigid bodies like boxes and boats. Another interesting aspect is that the boat motion isn't scripted, it's simulated via the propeller's interaction with the fluid.
(source: cemyuksel.com)
At the conference he said he was planning to release the source code, but I haven't seen anything yet. His website contains the full paper and the videos he showed at the conference.
Edit: Just saw your comment about wanting to simulate flowing liquids rather than rippling pools. This wouldn't be suitable for that, but I'll leave it here in case someone else finds it useful.
What type of water are you trying to simulate? Pools of water that ripple, or flowing liquids?
I don't think I've ever seen flowing water ever, except in rendered movies. Rippling water is fairly easy to do, this site usually crops up in this type of question.
Yeah, this type of voxel based solution only really work if your liquid is confined to very discrete and static boundaries.
For simulating flowing liquid, do some investigation into particles. Quite alot of progress has been made recently accelerating them on the GPU, and you can get some stunning results.
Take a look at, http://nzone.com/object/nzone_cascades_home.html as a great example of what can be achieved.
I would like to make a list of remarkable robot simulation environments including advantages and disadvantages of them. Some examples I know of are Webots and Player/Stage.
ROS will visualize your robot and any data you've recorded from it.
Packages to check out would rviz and nav_view
This made me remember the breve project.
breve is a free, open-source software package which makes it easy to build 3D simulations of multi-agent systems and artificial life.
There is also a wikipage listing Robotics simulators
Microsoft Robotics Studio/Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008
Also read this article on MSDN Magazine
It all depends on what you want to do with the simulation.
I do legged robot simulation, I am coming from a perspective that is different than mobile robotics, but...
If you are interested in dynamics, then the one of the oldest but most difficult to use is sd/fast. The company that originally made it was acquired by a large cad outfit.
You might try heading to : http://www.sdfast.com/
It will cost you a bit of money, but I trust the accuracy of the simulation. There is no contact or collision model, so you have to roll you own. I have used it to simulate bipeds, swimming fish, etc.. There is also no visualization. So, it is for the hardcore programmer. However, it is well respected among us old folk.
OpenDynamics engine is used by people http://www.ode.org/ for "easier" simulation. It comes with an integrator and a primitive visualization package. There are python binding (Hurray for python!).
The build in friction model.. is ... well not very well documented. And did not make sense. Also, the simulations can suddenly "fly apart" for no apparent reason. The simulations may or may not be accurate.
Now, MapleSoft (in beautiful Waterloo Canada) has come out with maplesim. It will set you back a bit of money but here is what I like about it:
It goes beyond just robotics. You can virtually anything. I am sure you can simulate the suspension system on a car, gears, engines... I think it even interfaces with electrical circuit simulation. So, if you are building a high performance product, than MapleSim is a strong contender. Goto www.maplesoft.com and search for it.
They are pretty nice about giving you an eval copy for 30 days.
Of course, you can go home brew. You can solve the Lagrange-Euler equations of motion for most simple robots using a symbolic computation program like maple or mathematica.
EDIT: Have not be able to elegantly do certain derivatives in Maple. I have to resort to a hack.
However, be aware of speed issue.
Finally for more biologically motivated work, you might want to look at opensim (not to be confused with OpenSimulator).
EDIT: OpenSim shares a team member with SD/Fast.
There a lots of other specialized simulators. But, beware.
In sum here are the evaluation criteria for a simulator for robot oriented work:
(1) What kind of collision model do you have ? If it is a very stiff elastic collision, you may have problem in numerical stability during collisions
(2) Visualization- Can you add different terrains, etc..
(3) Handy graphical building tools so you don't have to code then see-what-you-get.
Handling complex system (say a full scale humanoid) is hard to think about in your head.
(4) What is the complexity of the underlying simulation algorithm. If it is O(N) then that is great. But it could be O(N^4) as would be the case for a straight Lagrange-Euler derivation... then your system just will not scale no matter how fast your machine.
(5) How accurate is it and do you care?
(6) Does it help you integrate sensors. For mobile robots you need to have a "robot-eyes view"
(7) If it does visualization, can it you do things like automatically follow the object as it is moving or do you have to chase it around?
Hope that helps!
It's not as impressive looking as Webots, but RobotBasic is free, easy to learn, and useful for prototyping simple robot movement algorithms. You can also program a BasicStamp from the IDE.
I've been programming against SimSpark. It's the open-source simulation engine behind the RoboCup 3D Simulated Soccer League.
It's extensible for different simulations. You can plug in your own sensors, actuators and models using C++, Ruby and/or RSG (Ruby Scene Graph) files.
ABB has a quite a solution called RobotStudio for simulating their huge industrial robots. I don't think it's free and I don't guess you'll get much fun out of it but it's quite impressive. Here's a page about it
I have been working with Carmen http://carmen.sourceforge.net/ and find it useful.
One of the disadvantages with Carmen is the documentation with all respect I think the webpage is a bit outdated and insufficient. So I like to hear from other people with experience in working with Carmen, or student reports/projects dealing with Carmen.
You can find a great list with simulation environments http://www.intorobotics.com/robotics-simulation-softwares-with-3d-modeling-and-programming-support/
MRDS is one of the best and it's free. Also LabView is good to be used in robotcs
National Instruments' LabView is a graphical programming environment for developing measurement, test, and control systems.
It could be used for 3D control simulation with SolidWorks.
MRDS is free and is one of the best simulation environment for robotics. Workspace also can be used, and please check this link if you want a complete list with robotics simulation software
Trik Studio has a nice and clear 2D model simulator and also visual and textual programming programming environments for them. They also soon will support 3D modeling tools based on Morse simulator. Also it is free and opensource and has multi-language interface.