Updates for the Month of March

Last I posted, I had written a tutorial about a method I had discovered to embed a 3D renderer inside a Compose Multiplatform app. For me, this is a pretty cool tool to have in belt as a multiplatform mobile developer slash mechanical engineer slash augmented reality aficionado. Since then, we’ve had a lot to do, from a couple short trips (staying in Spain), to a couple new projects (both personal and for clients). Well, I hate to go a whole month without adding anything to the blog, so here are a few quick updates.

Personal Updates and Travel

Currently, we are trying to renew our visas for a second year, so we can stay in the city of Bilbao. We’re now something like 87 days into a renewal process that we thought would take a month, but keeping our hopes up. As it stands, being in limbo limits our capacity to travel too far, but we have taken advantage of the trains and busses that we can take to many awesome places while staying in the country.

I usually leave the travel posting to Rachel (she’s much better at it), but to preview what I’m sure she’ll write about soon:

• Andalucía via Madrid on the train, with stops in Sevilla, Ronda, and Cordoba.
• Hiking in País Vasco, overlooking the bay in Plentzia, and viewing Bilbao from every direction.
• Stopping in La Rioja wine country, including the Frank Gehry designed Bodega Marqués de Riscal.

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Projects

After completing my ER3D project (download on the App Store!) I decided I wanted to start something new. I’ve had what I consider to be my main project, Mobile Multibody Dynamics (MOMDYN), sitting on the back burner for a little while as I’ve been thinking of how I might improve it in its next iteration. I always like to say that I was first to release a multibody dynamics (MBD) app that you can run on iPhone, but always felt that, while its something I would have loved to have as a student, its lacking a bit of a hook to being applicable to professional, or for being truly unique as a product.

What I’ve settled on is that, rather than trying to update MOMDYN incrementally, I’m starting fresh, taking with me knowledge that I’ve gained over the last couple years to develop something truly cool. That new idea is what I’m calling Augmented Reality Mobile Robotics (ARMOR), with its hook being:

• Read/write and editing ability for Unified Robot Description format (URDF) files, an industry standard for defining robot kinematics in the Robot Operating System (ROS) and other professional applications.
• View and interact with a robot or MBD model in AR, including with real-time physics simulation.

I’ve been posting a lot about this project on LinkedIn, to track my progress. Here’s a whole slew of different posts (which I just learned to embed!). You can see it progress from just simply being able to load a pendulum model, to recent updates with editing a loading interfaces, and more complicated models with multiple joints and contact.

So far, the app should have full support for URDF format, and I also hope to add support for MuJoCo. The latter has a more complicated (and more capable) file format, and advanced real-time simulation libraries that take a step being the RealityKit simulation I’m currently using. Even better, check out this recent NVIDIA article talking about a true next-generation simulation offering, which happens to build on MuJoCo. If I can get that working on an iPhone, I think it would be a true one-of-a-kind.

Just for fun, here’s one unrelated post I made where I was honing my Blender chops 😉

I mentioned earlier that I have a couple client projects going as well. None of those are public yet, so I can’t share any cool images, but to give a taste of whats to come:

• An AR app for the architecture and landscaping industry, using LIDAR to perform measurements and aid in cost estimation and proposal generation.
• An embedded Android app for viewing trail cam images and video.
• A machine learning model for predicting race car aerodynamics.

Wrappinp-Up

As we start our second year in País Vasco (pending visa renewal), we have been visiting areas both in northern and southern Spain to take in the countryside. At the same time, I’m working on various technical projects, with a continued focus on taking advantage of the AR capabilities of mobile devices.

¡nos vemos!