Robot-Draw, an Internet-based visualization tool for robotics education

Robot manipulators are described geometrically by their Denavit-Hartenberg parameters table. This article describes a package that combines recently developed Internet-based programming tools to generate three-dimensional virtual models of robot manipulators from a DH parameter table. Robot-Draw combines hypertext markup language (HTML), practical extraction and report language (PERL), and virtual reality modeling language (VRML). Internet users can generate three-dimensional robot manipulator models on their computer screens, navigate around the robot model and examine it from any angle. The package was designed as a visualization aid in robotics education and allows educators and students to easily visualize robotic structures and directly evaluate the effect of a parameter variation on the overall robot. Robot-Draw can also be a useful tool in the structural design of robot manipulators. Users with Internet connections can use the University of West Florida Robot-Draw package at the UWF Electrical Engineering web server by connecting to http://uwf.edu/ece/robotdraw.htm.