Practical Instruction Robot Modeling Sample

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Objectives

The goal of the practical is to model and simulate a robot or a robot-like system with at least 6 degrees of freedom (DOF’s). We will build up the modeling from scratch such that your learn all aspects and obtain a good understanding of multi-link robotic systems. After finishing this practical you are able to design your own (arm-type and mobile) robots and simulate them to verify their behavior. Or model and simulate robots on the market that you or your employer intend to purchase. You will be able to determine the workspace and the ability to approach an object from various directions. You will also be able to model the kinematics multi-finger grippers or walking robots or the kinematics of human bodies. We say, to model the kinematics, which means that we will model the motion apart from the masses of the links and joints and without taking forces into account. In the following course, Robot Control in block 2 the aspects of mass and dynamics will be taken into account in more detail. But a full discussion of robot dynamics is outside the scope of the minor (for the interested student, we have some tips for studying robot dynamics). In addition to be able to understand robot dynamics a good understanding of robot kinematics is crucial. For this reason, we focus here on robot kinematics.

Choice of software platform

There are a number of software tools for robot modeling. For example, each robot manufacturer (big names are: Universal Robots, ABB, Fanuc, Yaskawa, Adept, Kawasaki, Kuka, Schunk, Staubli, Yamaha Robotics) delivers software to simulate and control the specific robots of the manufacturer. When you are working with a robot from such a company you definitely have to try their software. In this practical we will not use one of these software tools because each is limited to the companies own robot-line and many isues on kinematics is abstracted away. There are more flexible software tools as well in which you can design and simulate your own robotic system, usually these are also free for academic use. One of the tools is ROS, the Robot Operating System, you will learn to work with during the tutorial series in this minor. Because ROS is a quite advanced set of tools, it is not the best tool to start learning robot kinematics. Another tool is V-rep from the company Copelia Robotics, which is offered for free for academic use, so you can use it as a student. You definitely are recommended to have a look at this software, but we will not use it during the practical, because it is rather advanced and we think you better learn the basics by starting from scratch.

In this practical we will make use of Python to model the kinematics of a robot or robotlike system. We have chosen Python, because it is easy to learn, widely used in robotics, both in reasearch-lab’s and also in a growing amount of companies and many high-quality modules^[1]. Another alternative programming language could have been C++, a powerful language. But it not only takes quite some time to learn this language, developing code in C++ is quite involved. Also for those who know C++, it is very beneficial to know Python, such that you are able to quickly prototype and test your ideas in Python. Parts that need to be optimized for speed, then can be later programmed in C++ (or use Cython or Numba).