Open schrum2 opened 6 years ago
Create solid cubes, squishy cubes, and contracting and expanding cubes. Get information from original soft robots video. Connect multiple cubes and see if the physics works correctly
I don't think @DevonFulcher is going to get around to this after all, but maybe @Squillyprice01 can do it? The first step is to simply make a test chamber that contains individual cubes with interesting physical properties (as described above). Next, attach the cubes to each other, and see if the physics simulation makes them behave appropriately.
Once all of those pieces are in place, the evolution part should be simple.
Despite the fact that this will be harder than expected, I would like it to be the number one priority next week. I would love to see a prototype of this before SCOPE ends. However, all I am really interested in is getting voxel based enemies into the game. Perhaps there are ways to do this using CPPNs that do not depend on creating different types of material properties.
I am going to make a project for this task using GitHub's project. This will be a learning experience in itself, but this task is far larger than a single issue and I would like a place to store all of the research and bits as they are developed or found.
Although I think it will be super cool to have this feature eventually, I think we will still have a complete product even without the soft robots. In fact, I think we should focus on refining what we already have, and doing a human subject study on that. Then, we can add soft robots as an enhancement, and write a second research paper about that new feature!
Maybe the Bullet Physics library will make it possible to finally do this: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/bullet-physics-for-unity-62991
Once we can generate 3D shapes #16 we should be able to adapt the CPPNs to create soft robots. I haven't done this before, but others have: http://jeffclune.com/publications/2013_Softbots_GECCO.pdf https://www.creativemachineslab.com/soft-robot-evolution.html http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~jbongard/papers/2015_GECCO_Cheney.pdf