The Goal Of Motors

Essential Topic for learning Bottango.

Big idea

Create and configure virtual motors in Bottango to link the movement of a joint with real-world effect on your hardware.

If Bottango were only a 3D modeling program, it would be a pretty lackluster one. Motors in Bottango are how you translate between the desired movement in the 3D simulation and actual output on your real-world hardware. Every individual motor on your robot that you want to control in Bottango needs a virtual equivalent.

Note

Of the supported motors in Bottango, PWM servo motors are the simplest to configure and control.

In this section, we will exclusively use PWM servo motors to teach the basics of motor control in Bottango. In later sections we’ll discuss specific implementation details of other types of motors.

Tutorial vs your robot

We’ll continue using the project started in the previous sections on Structures and Joints. However, you of course don’t have the same robot in real life, with the same motors. From here on out, it’s up to you if you want to follow along with the tutorial virtually only, without a real hardware connection, or if you want to start a new project, model the structure of your robot, and transpose the lessons of the rest of this documentation to your specific needs.

If you do begin working on your own robot from here on out, I really recommend you have your hardware driver(s) configured, connected, and wired up to your motors. One of the core design principles of Bottango is to closely match the real-world configuration of your robot to the virtual one in Bottango. Only by having a live hardware driver wired up to your motors is that possible.