ubii-web-ik-force-computation

Ubi-Interact Inverse Kinematics and force computation for web browsers. This is a necessary step in physical embodiment scenarios, where users are represented virtually through a physical avatar.

Usage

Ubii-web-ik-force-computation can be used either as a standalone demo or as a node module in Your own applications.

Prerequisites

This project communicates with a Ubi-Interact master node. Even though some of the functionality can be tested without it, it is recommended to have one.

To calculate a full pose using inverse kinematics, this module receives IK targets from another Ubi-Interact component. ubii-web-target-publisher simplifies the process of publishing targets using abstractions similar to the ones in this module.

To calculate the necessary forces and applying them to a physical avatar, this module needs to communicate with other Ubi-Interact components. ubii-web-avatar-applier simplifies this process using similar abstractions to this module as well.

Online Demo

The demo in this project is available at https://goldst.dev/ubii-web-ik-force-computation.

Running the demo locally

After cloning, install, and run the project:

npm install
npm start

Your terminal will contain the demo URL, e.g. http://localhost:8080. Note that the command starts a development server which is not suitable for production environments.

Using this project as a node module

To your existing node project, add the module:

npm i ubii-web-ik-force-computation

You can either initialize the processor in HTML using the bundled version:

<script src=".node_modules/ubii-web-ik-force-computation/dist/bundle.js"></script>

<script>
    new UbiiWebIkForceComputation.Processor(options);
</script>

Or you can import it directly in your JavaScript/TypeScript project:

import { Processor } from 'ubii-web-ik-force-computation';

new Processor(options);

For available options, see ProcessorOptions.ts.

That's it! Other than supplying the options, no further configuration is necessary. If you want to stop the processor, just call stop() on the processor object.

Technical Details

The general structure of this project is similar to ubii-web-target-publisher and ubii-web-avatar-applier, however, it is somewhat more complex:

The Processor either directly (useDevice===true) or indirectly (false) creates an instance of HumanIK, a class which sets up bones and constraints using IK.ts and calculates them on demand. ik.ts is very constrained in the amount and kind of constraints it offers, thus, the human pose will not be completely realistic.

When useDevice is false (default setting), this module creates a processing module, which is doing the same thing, but has more potential for optimization. With some changes, it may run in a separate thread. The code for processing modules (folders devices, nodes, processing with the exception of processing/ProcessingModuleAvatarMotionControls.ts, storage) is taken from ubii-node-nodejs, and only slightly modified – very generous broad were added so that it works with TypeScript, and some lines of code were changed to ensure compatibility with ubii-node-webbrowser.

License and Credits

MIT