Spider Explorer Project

• The Introduction

  The Spider Explorer simulation program was written as a Computer Graphics Project by Artyom Chebotaryov under supervision of Dr. Gershon Elber.

• The Goal

  The goal of the project is to simulate the movement of 2N-legged model on the random surface from one point (the source) to another (the target).
  Each leg consists of two parts: "hip" (with two freedom degrees) and "shin" (with one freedom degree).
  
  The simulation includes the following features & tasks:
  
  

  • Providing a possibility to load & move any 2N-legged model given in predefined format (see Description of the structure of the 2N-legged models).
    
    
  • Providing two types of the leg movements: criss-cross and parallel.
    
    
  • Calculating the direction of each Spider step according to the current position of the Spider and the position of target point.
    
    
  • Calculating the tilt of the spider's body reflecting the ground surface (optional).
    
    
  • Calculating the movement of each leg according to the Spider's step movement. Each leg movement consists of three rotations of the leg parts ("hip" and "shin") according to freedom degrees.
    
    

• Implementation

  The Spider Explorer simulation program was totally written in IRIT 3D modelling environment.
  
  

• The Site Map

  This site contains the following sections (see in top menu):
  
  

  • Screenshots & Animations - several screen shots of simulated scenes of different 2N-legged models from different points of view and several GIF animations of simulated movements.
    
    
  • Downloads - Spider Explorer IRIT sources, Simulated Animation IRIT data files, 2N-legged Models IRIT sources, 2N-legged Models IRIT data files.
    
    
  • Documentation - User manual for creating new simulations, description of the structure of the 2N-legged models used in simulation, mathematical description of leg movements, general overview of simulation process and the brief description of sources, variables & functions used in simulation program.
    
    

  
  

• Future plans

  Here is a list of future plans for Spider Explorer:

  • Adding more target points and finding a best path for visiting them.
  • Adding stones of different sizes to the ground surface.
  • Improvement of the algorithm for finding the trajectory to the target (i.e. checking out the pathless hills and pits).
  • Adding a robotic arm with four or five degrees of freedom to examine the target object.