6.3 Control interface
6.3.1 Control window
When opening a world containing an e-puck robot, Webots displays the e-puck control window (which also appears when you double-click on the e-puck robot). This window is depicted in figure 6.3 and figure 6.5. It allows visualizing the devices of the robot. The distance measurements are displayed in blue, outside the body of the robot. The light measurements are displayed in grey, inside the body. The LEDs are displayed in grey when off and red when on. The motor speeds are displayed in red, and the motor position is displayed in grey just below the speed of each motor. The camera image (if present) is displayed on the right hand side of the window. The floor sensor values (if present) are displayed at the top of the body.
Figure 6.5: The e-puck control window for remote control
This e-puck control window appears because the model of the DifferentialWheel node in the world file was set to "e-puck". Changing this model to an empty string will disable this control window.
6.3.2 Bluetooth remote control
E-puck has a Bluetooth interface, allowing it to communicate with Webots. This Bluetooth interface must be set up according to your operating system, following the instructions of the e-puck robot. It has been tested successfully under Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Once properly set up, your Bluetooth connection to your e-puck should appear in the second popup menu of the control window after you restart Webots. If it doesn't appear here, it means that your computer was not properly configured to interface with your e-puck robot through Bluetooth. Please refer to the instructions in the e-puck documentation.
When selecting remote control from the first popup menu of the control window, Webots will use the Bluetooth connection selected in the second popup menu to establish a connection with your e-puck robot. Once connected, it will display the version of the e-puck serial communication software in the statuts bar of the control window (as displayed in figure 6.5), and will switch the control to the real robot. That is, it will send motor commands to the real robot and display sensor information (proximity, light, camera image, etc.) coming from the real robot. This makes the transfer from the simulation to the real robot trivially simple.
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