Can V-Rep drive a physical robot ?

Typically: "How do I... ", "How can I... " questions
Post Reply
georgeprofenza
Posts: 2
Joined: 15 May 2017, 16:07

Can V-Rep drive a physical robot ?

Post by georgeprofenza »

Hi,

I'm very new to V-Rep and slowly making my way through the exhaustive documentation.

Is V-Rep only a simulator or can it drive an actual robot, like a UR10 for example ?
If so, where can I read more about that ?

Thank you,
George

coppelia
Site Admin
Posts: 10336
Joined: 14 Dec 2012, 00:25

Re: Can V-Rep drive a physical robot ?

Post by coppelia »

Hello George,

you can also drive robots or interface V-REP with other type of devices (e.g. input devices). It is just a matter to writing the interface or plugin for V-REP. But keep in mind that it is not meant to drive and react to systems that are real-time critical.

Cheers

georgeprofenza
Posts: 2
Joined: 15 May 2017, 16:07

Re: Can V-Rep drive a physical robot ?

Post by georgeprofenza »

Hi,

Thank you very much for the explanations.
As far as I understand, there is no built-in support for driving robots directly (e.g. connecting to their controller box and sending the right commands), but it is possible to write a an interface or plugin to bridge the two (an example would be using the Remote API to send data from V-Rep to a program that drives the robot directly).

You've mentioned that V-Rep is
not meant to drive and react to systems that are real-time critical.
I'm guessing all the calculations, rendering, external API execution within V-Rep will add up and there will be a delay.
What would be the fastest guesstimated rate for data coming from V-Rep and going to another program running on localhost ?

Thank you,
George

coppelia
Site Admin
Posts: 10336
Joined: 14 Dec 2012, 00:25

Re: Can V-Rep drive a physical robot ?

Post by coppelia »

Yes,

you basically can't control the computation time of a time step, which includes running all the scripts, the physics engine, the IK, etc., and the visualization. This means that you might be running always slower than real-time, always faster, or sometimes slower and other times faster, depending on the work load in that specific simulation step.
But you can also use V-REP to compute, say, a full trajectory, and once the trajectory is ready, send it to the robot, which will execute it independently of V-REP.

Cheers

Post Reply