tower.tens File Reference

Detailed Description

This file defines a large planar tower-like tensegrity structure. The structure has a large number of degrees of freedom (15 actually) and it is used to show the capability of the CuikSuite to solve path planning problems in large dimensional spaces. The objective of this planning problem is to move the tower around an obstacle (the red box).

To understant the complexity of this problem, you can try to solve it interactively executing

You can select the degrees of freedom to actuate and increase/decrease them, trying to surround the obstacle.

The planning problem to connect the following configuration

can be solved automatically executing

The solution path can be visualized executing

This path can be smoothed executing

In this way we first reduce the length of the path and the the control effort. This process is more effective than directly reducing the path effort on the original path: the shortcut path is very effective and it returns a path that is not far from the minimum control effort path (recall that if all elements in the tensegrity are elastic, the control effort and the path length are the same).

The smoothed path can be visualized executing

The compressions/tensions along the path can be obtained executing

which generates a file that can be manipulated using, for instance, Matlab

  • F=load('examples/Tensegrity/tower_path_s.forces');
  • plot(F(:,1))

Similarly, the potential energy along the path can be analized executing:

  • bin/cuikenergy noscale examples/Tensegrity/tower examples/Tensegrity/tower_path_s

The energy values can be plotted using Matlab executing

  • E=load('examples/Tensegrity/tower_path_.cost');
  • plot(E)

Definition in file tower.tens.