Throwing Environment

An environment for BOLeRo that simulates a 3 DOF arm that throws a ball. This is a contextual environment. The context defines the target for the throw. This is a very simple environment that is used to demonstrate how MARS environments can be implemented.

Installation

Install BOLeRo first. See here for instructions.

Source bolero's env.sh. Then you can install this environment:

git clone git@github.com:rock-learning/throwing_environment.git
cd throwing_environment
mkdir build
cd build
cmake_debug ..
make install

Getting Started

There is a very simple script that demonstrates how to use this environment in the subfolder 'example': 'run_experiment.py'.

License

This BOLeRo environment is distributed under the 3-clause BSD license.

Environment Parameters

When using this MARS based environments there are some basic environment parameters, which can be changed within learning_config.yml:

• calc_ms: The time interval the physic engine does updates or the time between two physic updates.
• stepTimeMs: The time interval for one step of the environment. E.g. if stepTimeMs = 20 and calc_ms = 2 the environment will do 10 physics updates for each step.
• graphicsUpdateTime: The time interval for updating the graphical interface.
• enableGUI: If false MARS starts without GUI. Therefore the file core_libs-nogui.txt must exist.
• armHeight: Height of the arm above the ground. This is important to compute the point at which the ball hits the ground.
• verbose: Verbosity level (integer).

Example code for the Environment section in the learning_config.yml:

Environment:
  type: "throwing_environment"
  calc_ms: 10
  stepTimeMs: 10
  graphicsUpdateTime: 10
  enableGUI: true
  armHeight: 0.0
  verbose: 0