72 Shareware and Freeware Robotics Simulators: part2
Description
This article is from the Robotics FAQ, by Kevin Dowling nivek@cs.cmu.edu with numerous contributions by others.
72 Shareware and Freeware Robotics Simulators: part2
"Public Domain SGI based simulator"
This is a Silicon Graphics based delux robot simulator with lots of
graphics Stuff. It was written by Andrew Conway and Craig Dillon as
undergraduates for an electrical engineering project at the University
of Melbourne. Not much in installation instructions. There is a latex
manual with usage instructions and the mathematics. Warning: It is
4.3Mbytes compressed, and the US-Australia link is quite slow.
Disclaimer: I [Andrew] haven't used this software for years. If it
malfunctions, don't sue me or Craig, we don't guarantee it.
[19]ftp://krang.vis.citri.edu.au/pub/
MODULSH
The complete programe is divided into three menus: Main, Drawing and
Robot Menus. features such as selecting elements or the complete
screen, rotating, translating, zooming, enlarging or reducing the
scale and passing to the two dimensional drawing window from the three
dimensional one are available.
The Drawing Menu also offers many other possibilities like drawing
three dimensional circles, ellipses, arcs, elliptical arcs, cylinders,
cones, prisms, ellipsoids, toroids, etc. In addition to these, it is
also possible to obtain hidden line drawing and to change the point
numbers of the circular drawing elements. Whereas in Robots Menu,
operations like selecting modules from the sub-menus, containing
graphics, which concern body, wrist, hand systems and work spaces of
robots, finding direct and inverse kinematics solution of these
systems, point by point simulation of the robot motions, changing
Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and joint freedom extremums from the
menus can be performed. WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil/pd1:/
OAK.Oakland.Edu/pd1:/MODULSH2.ZIP MODULSH1.ZIP is the design and
animation of robots, 1 of 2. MODULSH2.ZIP is the design and animation
of robots, 2 of 2 Author:
Dr. Hikmet Kocabas
Istanbul Technical University
MKKOCABS%TRITU.BITNET@FRMOP11.CNUSC.FR
MKKOCABS@TRITU.BITNET
Robotica
Contact: Mark W. Spong
Coordinated Science Lab
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1308 W. Main St.
Urbana, IL 61801
tel: 217.333.4281
fax: 217.244.1653
net: spong@lagrange.csl.uiuc.edu
[20]http://www.ge.uiuc.edu/directory/faculty/Spong.html
Robotica is a trademark of The Board of Trustees of the University of
Illinois.
Robotica is a collection of useful robotics problem solving functions
encapsulated in a Mathematica package. Utilizing Mathematica's
computational features allows results to be generated in purely
symbolic form.
Robotica requires inputing the form of a table of Denavit-Hartenberg
parameters describing the robot to be analyzed. Once the table has
been entered, Robotica can generate the forward kinematics for the
robot. The A and T matrices as well as the velocity Jacobian, J, are
generated. Of course, it is possible to display and save to an
external file all of the data generated. If the dynamics equations of
the robot are also to be generated, the input must include the
dynamics description data.
Once the forward kinematics are produced, Euler-Lagrange dynamics
equations can be calculated. The inertia matrix, Coriolis and
centrifugal terms, Christoffel symbols and gravity vectors are all
available to the user once the dynamics routines have run.
Utilizing the forward kinematics results, Robotica can calculate the
manipulability ellipsoids when supplied with a range of joint variable
values. It is possible to generate and save a list of manipulability
measures as well as display the ellipsoids with the robot on the
screen.
In addition, Robotica has the capbability of reading external
simulation (e.g., SIMNON) output files and displaying the motion of
the robot when sbjected to the sequence of joint variables described
in the file. This requires that the robot has been input as a table of
Denavit-Hartenburg parameters, and that the foward-kinematics routines
have been executed.
Robotics contains several functions that can be used to draw the robot
in a specific configuration, or show the robot moving through a range
of joint parameter values. Most of the graphics output can be animated
if the Animation.m package is loaded The animations can be saved and
later restored and viewed again.
To simplify interactation with Robotica, an X-Windows based interface
has been designed. This interface insulates the user from the
inconvenient textual interface Mathematica provides.
Requirements: Mathematica 2.0 or better. X-windows requires 2.1 or
better.
The University has requested that all users of Robotica sign and
return a license agreement. This is mainly to keep a record of
Robotica users for future upgrades, etc. The license agreement states
that you may freely use and modify Robotica as you wish but that you
may not sell it.
You can obtain a postscript copy of this license agreement via
anonymous [21]ftp://ftp.csl.uiuc.edu/pub/robotica. Please print out
the license agreement, sign and date it, and FAX it to me [Mark Spong]
It is important that you also include your email address on the
license agreement. As soon as I receive your FAX I will send you the
Robotica package and the X-windows GUI.
Also in the directory /pub/robotica is a postscript file containing
the Robotica users manual which you may freely copy and distribute.
Any comments that you have after using Robotica would be greatly
appreciated. In addition, any questions you have or bugs you find can
be reported to me and we will do our best to address them.
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