Mimic an animal — Animate¶

Goal

In this tutorial, we will play an animation on Pepper, using the Animate action.

Prerequisites

Before stepping in this tutorial, you should:

Know how to use Android resources.
Be familiar with the Action notion. For further details, see: Running Actions on Pepper.

Let’s start a new project

Start a new project, let’s call it AnimatePepper.
Robotify it and make sure it implements the QiSDK & the Robot Life Cycle.

For further details, see: Creating a robot application.

Adding an animation resource¶

We could create a new animation from scratch, using the Animation Editor or the Trajectory Editor, but for this first discovery, let’s select a predefined one.

Step

Action

In Android Studio, choose File > New > Import animation…

The Animation Browser / Viewer opens:

In Action > Animals, select the elephant_a001 animation and click the Select button.

Result: The elephant_a001.qianim file is added to your res/raw folder and opens.

Good to know: Animations are stored in .qianim and .pmt files in the raw resources.

Close the animation file window and return to your MainActivity window.

Building the animation¶

From this animation file we must now build an Animation object.

To do this, we use the AnimationBuilder class.

In the onRobotFocusGained method, add the following code:

// Create an animation.
val animation: Animation = AnimationBuilder.with(qiContext) // Create the builder with the context.
                                .withResources(R.raw.elephant_a001) // Set the animation resource.
                                .build() // Build the animation.

// Create an animation.
Animation animation = AnimationBuilder.with(qiContext) // Create the builder with the context.
                                      .withResources(R.raw.elephant_a001) // Set the animation resource.
                                      .build(); // Build the animation.

Using the animation¶

We will animate Pepper by using the Animate interface.

Add an Animate field in your MainActivity:

// Store the Animate action.
private var animate: Animate? = null

// Store the Animate action.
private Animate animate

Create it with an AnimateBuilder in the onRobotFocusGained method:

// Create an animate action.
animate = AnimateBuilder.with(qiContext) // Create the builder with the context.
                                  .withAnimation(animation) // Set the animation.
                                  .build() // Build the animate action.

// Create an animate action.
animate = AnimateBuilder.with(qiContext) // Create the builder with the context.
                                .withAnimation(animation) // Set the animation.
                                .build(); // Build the animate action.

We used the previously created Animation to set the animation Pepper will perform.

Running the animation¶

We can now run the Animate:

// Run the animate action asynchronously.
val animateFuture: Future<Void>? = animate?.async()?.run()

// Run the animate action asynchronously.
Future<Void> animateFuture = animate.async().run();

Adding some log¶

To be notified when the animate action starts, let’s use the addOnStartedListener method.

Add this before the run:

// Add an on started listener to the animate action.
animate?.addOnStartedListener { Log.i(TAG, "Animation started.") }

// Add an on started listener to the animate action.
animate.addOnStartedListener(() -> Log.i(TAG, "Animation started."));

Do not forget to remove this listener on Animate in the onRobotFocusLost method:

// Remove on started listeners from the animate action.
animate?.removeAllOnStartedListeners()

// Remove on started listeners from the animate action.
if (animate != null) {
    animate.removeAllOnStartedListeners();
}

Note

Take advantage of the Animate.OnStartedListener to start some sound at the beginning of the animation, using the MediaPlayer class.

To display a log trace indicating that the animation finished with success or error, add after the run:

// Add a lambda to the action execution.
animateFuture?.thenConsume { future ->
    if (future.isSuccess) {
        Log.i(TAG, "Animation finished with success.")
    } else if (future.hasError()) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Animation finished with error.", future.error)
    }
}

// Add a lambda to the action execution.
animateFuture.thenConsume(future -> {
    if (future.isSuccess()) {
        Log.i(TAG, "Animation finished with success.");
    } else if (future.hasError()) {
        Log.e(TAG, "Animation finished with error.", future.getError());
    }
});

Let’s try it¶

The sources for this tutorial are available on GitHub.

Step

Action

Install and run the application.

For further details, see: Running an application.

Choose “Mimic animals”.

You should observe the following:

the log “Animation started.” is displayed in the console,
Pepper executes the animation,
the log “Animation finished with success.” is displayed in the console.

That’s it! You can now animate Pepper!

More¶

Mastering Animation labels tutorial.