[Robotics] A robotics panel

[Stefaan michielsen]

 A new version of Blender is on its way. And among many other things, also
the User Interface (UI) of this new 2.5 release will be far more easy to
adapt to specific use cases.

A Panel in Blender's UI is a region on the screen where the user can
define a menu-like interface to interact with, as in the following figure.
[image: robotics%20panel.png]
One idea we have in this context is to make a Panel specifically for use
by roboticists, with, for example, the following functionalities:
- buttons for the basic navigation functions (e.g., rotate the scene),
 instead of the key shotcuts that one has to remember in the default
 version of Blender.
- buttons to launch customized functions, for instance a script to open a
 communication channel between a robot armature and an external "driver"
 program.
- a robot builder, encapsulating the current way of building an armature.
- an interface to the various Inverse Kinematics solvers that are in
 development.
- ...
It is not clear what functionality is really desired to include in such a
robotics panel, or what are the priorities. Hence, we like to ask your
opinion:
- Where do we want the panel?
- Would it be more suitable to put in the Scene section, or is a closer
 integration with the armature/bone section preferable?
- Should it be a top-level panel, that hides all Blender functionality and
 offers user friendly buttons to the most wanted functionality for
 robotics? - ...

Please let us know what you think about these suggestions! Both about the
idea of a robotics Panel in itself, as about the concrete buttons and
input/output field to put in that Panel.

On the "Blender for Robotics" wiki
 <http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Robotics:Index#Blender_For_Robotics>
you find some detailed instructions on how to add Panels in 2.5.

We are also investigating other new features in 2.5, such as events,
graphs, and the game engine. Please react on this mailinglist if you are
doing similar work, so that we can profit from each other's experiences.

Best regards,

Stefaan Michielsen
Herman Bruyninckx
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