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About

YAML Files

As it stands (05.11.21) Revolve accepts (and saves) robot morphologies in the YAML file format. YAML files are used for 3 proposes:

  1. As an output (storage) file for evolved Robot morphologies created in revolved (compatible with Gazebo).
  2. As an input file to the "INSERT_NAME" script that generates the controller .config file to run on the raspberry pi.
  3. As an input file to some plugin (TODO: Needs research) which returns an STL for 3D printing.

For these purposes, YAML files seem to work ok. However, two issues arise. Firstly, it makes it extremely hard to hand-design robots when necessary; as it is for my Robot Zoo project or, for example, when we desire to evolve a brain on a predefined morphology. Secondly, it makes it hard to easily visualize robots, requiring the start of a Revolve instance, or the use of the unreliable PNG generator (which fails to show the z-dimension of morphologies).

Creating A Yaml Editor & Visualisation Tool (Devolve)

To combat these issues I have written a visualization program that does the two following things:

  1. Import YAML robots file for viewing
  2. Make new, or edit, Robots from scratch

I will be using:

  • PyYaml for loading and dumping the files
  • Ursina game engine to do the visualizations

I've called this project "Devolve" as a reference to "Revolve" from which it derives.

Disclaimer

This app is in very early development stage, as such I can't promise it will be completely bug-free.

Feel free to ask me any questions you may have :)