Nikolay Vladimirov's MarIOnette Links Real-World Robots to Their Virtual Twins in Blender
Tested with AVR-based Arduinos and Arm-based Teensy boards, this Blender plugin provides clever digital twin capabilities.
Developer Nikolay Vladimirov has released a tool that aims to blend the virtual and real worlds, by providing control of an Arduino- or Teensy-powered robot from within the Blender software: MarIOnette.
"This is something I've been chipping away at for quite a while in between larger projects," Vladimirov explains of MarIOnette. "I hope someone will find this tool useful. [It] has been tested on most AVR-based Arduino-compatible microcontrollers. Arm-based Teensy microcontrollers have also been verified. Other microcontrollers have not yet been tested."
The idea behind the project is simple. MarIOnette is a plugin for designed for version 3.2 and higher of Blender, the popular 3D graphics tool, which allows you to link a 3D model of a robot created in the software with a real-world version of it built from actual hardware — and wherever the one goes, the other will follow.
On the one hand, MarIOnette allows for a physical robot to be controlled via software — with a live digital twin acting out the motions on-screen as they happen. On the other, it allows for feedback in the other direction too — with one of Vladimirov's teases of an upcoming feature showing an Elmo doll mounted on a yoke controller being turned and tilted to make the on-screen version move too.
At the time of writing, MarIOnette supported standard, Dynamixel, and bus servos, digital on/off control, and pulse-width modulation (PWM) actuators, while also offering control over Neopixel-style addressable RGB (ARGB) LEDs. "Support for more actuators and features coming soon," the project's creator promises.
To prove the project's potential, Vladimirov has published a sample project: a robot which grasps a pen or pencil and draws on a Post-It note. The body of the 'bot is 3D-printed, while its motion comes from a pair of MG 996R servo motors with metal horns connected to an Arduino Nano board.
More information on the project, which is made available under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3, is available on the MarIOnette GitHub repository.
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