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I'd like to play around with computer vision and AI techniques without having to spend money on hardware right away. If there aren't any robotics simulation environments that model flight physics, could someone recommend the fastest/easiest way to make one? I don't want to make one from scratch, of course, but maybe it's possible to easily "glue" some existing apps together?

ektrules
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  • What sort of scale are you talking about? The first versions of the simulation environment for BAE replica's vision system were very simple physics - the only way to turn was an instant roll to 5G - but if you are wanting to do something like this http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce//news.php?id=460 then then you need quite a good model – Pete Kirkham Nov 13 '10 at 21:46
  • If you mean the scale of the aircraft, I'm thinking that I eventually would like to build a model airplane, with say, 6ft wingspan. It would be for outdoor use of course. I think you're right; I don't think I would need an extremely accurate physics model. It's mainly computer vision that I want to play around with, but I'd like the rendered environment to look realistic. BTW, that link is amazing. – ektrules Nov 14 '10 at 00:34

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As far as flight simulators go, X-Plane is by far the most realistic as far as air dynamics are concerned. Not only does that make X-Plane sound like a good choice for you, but you can create planes very easily using provided software and write plugins in either C++ or Python (I believe there still is a plugin for that) that can control/modify the environment. Plus X-Plane is actively worked on.

www.x-plane.com

Tanner
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  • I'm glad someone recommended X-Plane. I can definitely recommend it for this role - I have previously used it for UAV research while studying at university. One caveat to be aware of though - X-Plane *may* (or may not) struggle to simulate smaller UAVs due to the [Reynolds numbers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number) involved being significantly different to those of "full-size" aircraft. – Mac Oct 09 '12 at 09:42
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If you only want to simulate physics, this C++ code is very simple of following as well is well documented with well known references: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/

Actually, this is one of the physics model avaiable in Flightgear

sjngm
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A couple of ideas: First, I know Microsoft have discontinued their Flight Simulator, but it has an API and by all accounts the community surrounding it continues to thrive. That might be worth investigating. Secondly, What about writing a quick little "simulator" that uses either Bing Maps 3D or Google Earth? Richard Brunditt (http://rbrundritt.wordpress.com/ ) wrote a simulator for Bing Maps 3D so that might be worth investigating.

Finally once you think you have something reasonably good, and if you have a lot of open space, you could try a model aircraft...

winwaed
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You should have a look at Simplysim they have a demo of accurately simulating a UAV

http://www.simplysim.net/index.php?p=gallery&id=2

It looks very impressive!

"The SimplyCube can be used for advanced simulation projects, such as UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) simulations. In this UAV simulation, we have represented the DraganflyerX6 drone, which can be controlled either manually or automatically. A camera is mounted on the drone, as well as inclinometers, which permit to judge of the realism of that simulation which includes wind."

GreyCloud
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