Get Your Hardware In The Loop

Hardware? Simulation? Why not both? This is a simple example of hardware-in-the-loop, where forces in the physical world are written into a physics simulation in NVIDIA Omniverse. First, I setup a basic microcontroller, load cell, and amplifier. This device reports values over serial at 80hz. Fun fact, this hardware cost about $50. Next, I wrote a Python extension for Omniverse that connects to this device, reads values, and applies them to something in my stage. In this case, I'm taking the force reading and applying it to the physics attributes of a cube on the end of a robot. There are SO many use cases for this, it's hard to sum up. But a few quick examples: + Test controls logic against real inputs + Test robot tuning by simulating real loads + Record and playback these inputs for testing or ML training + Test existing hardware against some components in simulation What would you make with these kinds of tools?