About navipy

Navipy is a package providing method to simulate a navigating agent in realistic environment. Navipy make use of the blender rendering engine and its python API. Therefore any environment that can be realised with blender, can be used by navipy. Blender rendering may however be too slow to test different model of navigation or the different parameters of a given model. To speed up the simulation, the scene at relevant location in the environment can be stored in a database. Then, instead of rendering the scene again, it is simply loaded from the database. The agent can, thus, jump from relevant location to the next (i.e. move on a grid) without the need to use the blender API. Moreover, certain models of navigation do not depend on the history of the agent, but instead associate a moving direction to the current agent location. With such model, a graph can be created from the moving direction at each location on a grid of relevant places. The graph make use of the package networkx, thus attracting points or loop can be found, the possible connection from one point on the grid to another can be assessed, the number of independent sub graph can be calculated, etc.

Goals

The navigation toolbox aims to bring in an intuitive python toolbox different methods to model the visual navigation of a virtual agent.

• Keep the interface simple
• Allow complex environments and realistic world scenario
• Implement the most popular model of insect navigation
• Avoid re-rendering by using grid constrained motion.

How to install the navigation toolbox

The rendering from the insect point of view is done with the blender rendering engine. Thus, you will need to first install Blender https://www.blender.org/

Windows (With Anaconda)

We recommend using Anaconda (https://www.anaconda.com/) and create a virtual environment within it before installing the toolbox.

If you want to use Navipy with Blender, please jump to the Blender section

Start the Anaconda Prompt, and then enter

conda update conda

Upadate any packages if necessary by typing y to proceed

Then, create a virtual environment for your project

conda create -n yourenvname python=x.x anaconda

here yourenvname is the name of your project (without special characters and spaces), and python=x.x the version of python to use, for example python=3.5.3 (see table below to install a version matching with blender)

You can now activate your environment.

activate yourenvname

and install navipy

conda install navipy

You can now use the navigation toolbox.

Linux (With Pip)

From the terminal

pip install update

Upadate any packages if necessary by typing y to proceed

Then, create a virtual environment for your project

mkvirtualenv yourenvname

here yourenvname is the name of your project (without special characters and spaces)

You can now activate your environment.

workon yourenvname

and install navipy

pip install navipy

Blender-python version

Navipy can be interfaced with blender. It is highly recommended to use the same version of packages of blender when doing so, in order to reduce problem of compatibility. To determine the packages that you will need, you can run the script: https://gitlab.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/olivier.bertrand/navipy/blob/master/navipy/scripts/check_blender_versions.py in blender or via commandline

blender -b -P check_blender_versions.py

To run this command you will need to find where blender is stored, and run it from the command line

!starting cmd

You can then follow the instruction displayed in the terminal

To install navipy within blender, you still need to run the script https://gitlab.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/olivier.bertrand/navipy/blob/master/build_inblender.bat in the command line with the first parameter being the path to the python.exe used by blender

build_inblender.bat PathToBlender\\bin\\python.exe

Code of conduct

In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as users and developers pledge to making participation with this project a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, level of experience, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.