Series of robots and “new forms of life” using Theo Jansen mechanism – Blender Bullet SmallLuxGPU

[uploaded again due to quality – thank you, and sorry for losing previous comments] Watch in HD! Details…: Wanting to build simple but interesting looking robots, chose an interesting articulated wheel: the Theo Jansen mechanism.
All robots were programmatically generated, composed entirely of individual rigid body physics parts (everything you see) with relative mass, driven only by their motors’ torque (angular/rotation force), nothing else.
No manual keyframes; no animation bones or inverse kinematics; only pure physics consequences from simple motor logic, resulting movements are natural behaviours.

Simple universal (same for all bots) motor logic summary:
Continual synchronisation between segments in three modes:
Walk = 2pi fraction distribution across bot;
Stop = pi full step stability stance (+wait for sync);
Turn = pi full step
If robot perpendicular to direction of travel: Walk with motor torque in that direction.
Else: Stop, shortest Turn (half robot opposite motor torque) until perpendicular, Stop.
If significantly out of sync (generally due to external forces): pause motors.

Path finding and steering direction provided by ghost object with BGE steering actuator, targets, navigation mesh and obstacle avoidance, when appropriate.

Eventually it will be fun to create virtual robots using real-world materials, masses and motors to help prototype our Arduino projects ;).

Created using FREE open source software: Blender 2.62 3D content creation suite with Bullet Physics simulation engine, and rendered using SmallLuxGPU 2 fast OpenCL accelerated path tracer. (This project sat on ice for a while)
Recent exciting developments:
Blender 2.64 is out, 2.65 will be here very soon and 2.66 promises direct Bullet physics integration into the animation system: http://www.blender.org/
Erwin Coumans released Bullet Physics 2.81 with several new features: http://bulletphysics.org
David Bucciarelli is working on SmallLuxGPU 3 (SLG3) OpenCL accelerated renderer! (See LuxRender GPU forums): http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/SLG

Inspired by Theo Jansen mechanism: http://www.ted.com/talks/theo_jansen_creates_new_creatures.html
Check out more fun Blender physics “animals” on funkboxing’s channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/funkboxing

Duration : 0:14:26