ODE Tank Tracks 1

http://www.ode.org/

The Open Dynamics Engine is an open source, 3d rigid bodies/collisions library with a C interface. It is very flexible. I am planning to build a realistic heavy/vehicle tank simulation.

First step - tank tracks! Modeling the tracks themselves was fairly easy. Building a program to plot the positions of the links tightly around the wheels of the drivetrain was not! My solution (first attempt):

1) Build segments visiting each wheel center in clockwise order
2) Offset segment points by radius of wheels (positive or negative)
3) Use simple trig to complete the path around the sprocket and idler
4) Calculate the number of links that can fit within each segment based on link length
5) Use linear interpolation between each segment's start and end points to generate the link positions
6) Rotate links by angle difference of segment from the horizontal

Note: I could not find a screen-capture program for OSX that was smooth enough to record the animation so I filmed it using my camera! Sorry!

Music - Learning to Fly, Pink Floyd

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ODE
• open
• dynamics
• engine
• rigid
• bodies
• tank
• tracks
• chain
• physics
• openGL
• heavy
• vehicle
• engineering

[atos001]

this is so cool, I am doing a complex robot simulation too, and couldn't find a way of rendering the video, this video is kind of old (7 months) so did you find a way of capturing the video??

[Danny77uk]

Yeah check out ODE Tank Tracks 2. Also very old. The code is much better now.

[Benedek93]

Very nice work! I've tried making a tank "simulation" with ODE, but I just use many wheels instead of tracks (you can see the video on my channel). This must have been very hard.

[Danny77uk]

Thanks!!! This is my earliest, suckiest attempt - take a look at my other vid (ODE Tank Tracks 2 and that's an older version too) for a improved version in a vehicle. It's definitely worth doing - a lot of commercial tank games don't even bother. The hardest part is positioning the links and I have an improved, simplified algo for doing that. In the latest version, only the sprockets are powered and I'm using proper mesh models.

[Necrominator]

Nicely done :D

Also bonus points for Pink Floyd :P

[Danny77uk]

LOL! I'm into all sorts of music. I'm sorry for the poor video quality. You into ODE?

[VideoPro9]

never mind, soz xD found it in discription! :) great vid 5/5 xD

[VideoPro9]

what program u use? :) btw great weels ;)

[monimoni0147]

awesomeness dude pretty awesome work

theres some work waiting for me =D until now i'm just working on ogre3d but i still can't decide between Ode and NxOgre

c ya ^^

[atos001]

thank's man, it is helpful

i was busy with another project and am just getting back to ODE