A graphics environment for dynamics modelling and motion control of robot manipulators

Deals with graphic simulation of the dynamics and motion of robot manipulators implemented on a Sun workstation. The graphics work was limited to 2D models, using a skeleton or spine drawing technique to represent the arm. The plotting and mapping of the graphics utilizes the homogeneous transformation matrices which contain information on the position and orientation of manipulator links. The organization and interpretation of plotting, the direct use of the homogeneous transformation matrices and manipulator Jacobian in relating joint coordinate to Cartesian coordinate, and the structure of graphics display are discussed. The simulation program was arranged to form a user-friendly package. It includes inverse and forward kinematics and dynamics, as well as an adaptive control procedure. A dynamics analysis and control facility was implemented, which is an extension to currently available robot graphics simulation packages.<>