Learning robotics is a complex and expensive process. But future engineers can program, test and train robots in virtual reality – and such technologies already exist in our country.
In August 2019, the Varwin virtual reality platform and the developer of children’s robotic kits ROBBO created a joint project for the participants of the Design School at Innopolis University in Kazan. We set the guys the task of programming a robot in virtual reality (VR). The robot had to navigate in space, travel along a given trajectory, and also take an object and move it to another place. In just nine days, a team of three 17-year-olds created a program that allowed them to test the robot in VR.
The idea of the project
The project was created thanks to the National Technology Initiative Olympiad, whose task is to prepare young people for a breakthrough in international technology markets in the future. As part of one of the areas of the Olympiad, “Intelligent Robotic Systems”, schoolchildren had to program a robot at the training ground. The problem is that there are few such training grounds and robots in our country and they are very expensive, so it is difficult to prepare for this Olympiad.
Innopolis University in Kazan set the task of making the solution to this problem available in simulation, and not just in reality. If the robot can be programmed and debugged in a simulation, the guys will be able to prepare for the Olympiad without acquiring a robot. This is how the idea of using virtual reality, the most realistic simulation available today, was born.
Team and project development process
The Design School takes place in Innopolis every year, selection there is not easy, but many guys come back for the second and third time. As part of the Design School, the guys work with innovative technologies to solve real problems. The team for the Varwin and ROBBO project consisted of three 17-year-olds who are passionate about programming and are already thinking about connecting their lives with virtual reality and robotics.
The guys worked on the Varwin platform, which helped them simplify the process of creating a VR project. Some of the participants already had Unity programming experience (Varwin is also a Unity-based platform), while others got the hang of it: Varwin projects can be created without programming skills. The Varwin platform was new to all the guys, however, according to them, it turned out to be quite easy to manage, so it was not difficult to learn how to work on it.
The ultimate goal of the team was to create a virtual reality project that would help program the robot and eliminate possible errors. From a technical point of view, the guys had to repeat the same programming blocks that were used in Google Blockly when programming a real robot. Thanks to VR, it has become possible to recreate all the actions that a real robot can perform and optimize its work.
The robot, programmed by the guys in VR, could follow a given trajectory, take an object and move it to another place. At the same time, the errors eliminated were that the robot was not oriented in space, could not grab an object and fell from the surface on which it was located.
Project potential
One of the Project School participants, Alexander Strizhnev, shared his opinion on the combination of VR and robotics: “Tests are never superfluous, and the use of virtual reality allows you to test the robot code in unusual conditions. In addition, using a virtual robot allows you to find out more data about the robot at any given time: acceleration, absolute degree of rotation – something that would require complex devices in the real world.
Indeed, in order to program a robot in the traditional way and check how it will perform a given program, it is necessary to purchase the robot itself, as well as select the necessary environment and additional equipment for it.
By connecting VR and robotics, we have simplified the process of programming robots and made it accessible to more people – you no longer need to have a robot to create programs for it, test it and fix bugs.
Pavel Frolov, producer of ROBBO, explains the connection between VR and robotics using the example of his company: “We are preparing children for life in the world of the future, where robots take on all the monotonous tasks, and people do interesting work. We produce equipment for teaching robotics, but the problem is that few people can afford to buy this equipment. VR, like other types of simulation, allows children to do robotics without equipment, while getting the result no worse than those who have it.”
The Future of VR and Robotics: Avatar Technology
If we talk about the distant future of VR and robotics, the development potential here is much greater than the field of school education. Recall the film “Avatar”, where the researcher had his alien incarnation. Avatar technology is possible in reality.
According to the ideology of anthropomorphic robotics, the entire existing infrastructure and technosphere built by humanity is designed for human beings to live there. For example, there are buttons that you need to press with your hands, and stairs in houses that you need to walk on with your feet. Thus, if we want to make a helper for a person, it is best that he be similar in shape to a person, so that he also has arms, legs, fingers, etc.
A person has to deal with aggressive environments, such as radiation or dangerous gases. Since this threatens life, there are two options for salvation: either put on a person a protective equipment (like a spacesuit in space or a radiation protection suit), or instead of a person, send his avatar in the form of a robot to the epicenter.
Since the technology from the movie “Avatar” is not yet developed to the right extent, the question arises, how to control this robot? This is where virtual reality technology comes to the rescue. A person will be able to move around the VR environment and operate objects there, while his avatar in the form of a real robot will repeat everything after him, being in an aggressive or inaccessible environment for a person.
“The avatar technology is not actively used now because it is expensive,” explains Frolov from ROBBO. “We need to wait until this technology becomes more accessible, when its application will be more developed, and this is a question of the distant future.”
The Japanese concern Toyota is one of the companies that have already made great progress in this direction, creating a robot that obeys a person. A person connects to it using a virtual reality helmet and operates with objects that duplicate what is happening around the robot. At the same time, the robot in reality repeats what a person does in VR.
As we can see, robotics and VR have a great potential for development both now, in the field of teaching schoolchildren, and in the future, to create robots using avatar technology. The joint project between Varwin and ROBBO is just the first step in making robotics education more accessible to students around the world and accelerating technological progress.