Today, the developers behind the award nominated physics simulation AMBF gave a webinar to our research group. Adnan Munawar and Peter Kazanzides of the Sensing, Manipulation, and Real-Time Systems (SMARTS) lab introduced us to their simulator.
Rebecca of our group did already dive into the project and is now assisting the open source project with insights from our usage and our use cases. The AMBF Github webpage explains the project as follows:
The multi-body framework offers real-time dynamic simulation of multi-bodies (robots, free bodies and multi-link puzzles) coupled with real-time haptic interaction via several haptic devices (CHAI-3D) (including dVRK Manipulators and Razer Hydras). It also provides a python client for training NN and RL Agents on real-time data with simulation in the loop. This framework is built around several external tools that include an extended version of CHAI-3D (developed along-side AMBF), BULLET-Physics, Open-GL, GLFW, yaml-cpp, pyyaml and Eigen to name a few.
It turns out, that this framework meets our requirements very well, which is why we are now planning to collaborate in a broader sense with Johns Hopkins University to create synergies beyond the FUTURO group.
Image Credit: DLR