A few years back, I wrote a post on how to use the Vector SDK to design your own animations by mixing and matching existing animations. I still believe that animations are a relatively unexplored part of Vector, particularly considering the extraordinary amount of work that the makers of Cozmo and Vector put in designing animations.
Vector designers created 981 animations in total. While many of them can be encountered in your everyday life with Vector, some such as the holiday based fireworks can be rarely seen. The Vector SDK allows an easy way of not only trying animations, but mixing them together. Mixing animations makes them much more fun, and there is a lot of room to explore.
As an example you can try the following program at my github.
python3 genDynamicAnimation.py --animationwithoutlift anim_holiday_hyn_confetti_01 --animationwithoutbody anim_fistbump_requesttwice_01 --animationwithouthead anim_dancebeat_getout_02 -s <serial code if you have multiple vectors>
In the above animation sequence, the holiday animation (fireworks) are played, but with ignoring the lift movement. Instead the fist movement comes from the fist bump animation, while the track movement comes from the dance beat animation. Here is the end result.
Lets try one more example.
python3 genDynamicAnimation.py --animationwithoutlift anim_heldonpalm_putdown_relaxed_01 --animationwithoutbody anim_heldonpalm_transition2relaxed_01 --animationwithouthead anim_heldonpalm_getin_relaxed_01 -s <serial code if you have multiple vectors>
This sequence creates an animation that is a mix of three “held on palm” animations.
You can replace any of the animations with the 981 on the animations list, and create all kinds of permutations.Playing with animations has been one of my best experiences with the Vector robot. If you get a chance to play with the above program, please post in the comments below.