DADS - kinematics and dynamics package. Have ProEngineer to CADSI interface. Supports rigid and flexible body analysis. Animation and interfaces to FEA/FEM and CAD programs.
Deneb Robotics, was founded in 1985 develops 3D graphics-based factory simulation, telerobotic, and virtual reality software.
Products include IGRIP, ENVISION, Deneb/ERGO, UltraArc, UltraFinish, UltraPaint, UltraSpot, QUEST, Virtual NC, and TELEGRIP suite of simulation software packages utilize geometrically exact data to develop the models used in simulation, analysis, programming, and control applications.
Platforms include UNIX workstations from HP, SGI and Sun and Window NT (486/Pentium) machines.
ADAMS is a general purpose dynamics simulator: it can be used to simulate any mechanism. You input the model you want to simulate, and ADAMS builds the system of equations, and solves it through time. You can do kinematic, static, quasi-static and dynamic simulations. And then, you can study the results (forces, accelerations and so on).
It has a good graphical interface, although it's non-standard (it doesn't use OpenLook or Motif, but it's own windowing system). But if you want to study something not very common, you will have to deal with the text interface, and perhaps Fortran programming. It's not very easy to learn.
CimStation
Platforms:
SGI-4D, SUN SparcStation, Apollo, Intergraph, Computervision, HP, IBM Risc6000 and DEC.
Cost:
Base system around $55K (commercial license) They also have a University Partnership Program to enable universities to purchase CimStation for around $20K US and $25K International.
Features:
Silma offers application solutions for Spot Welding, Arc Welding, Painting, Stamping and Assembly, as well as Robot Calibration Tools. Also, SILMA has direct CAD interfaces to Computervision CADDS, Parametric Technology Corporation Pro/ENGINEER, IBM CATIA ans MCS ANVIL5000. We also support VDAFS and SET in addition to IGES. Finally, in addition to CimStation Robotics, we also offer SILMA(R) CimStation Inspection - used to create, simulate and edit DMIS programs for coordinate measuring machines- (CMMs) and SILMA(R) CimStation NC Verification- used to simulate and verify NC part programs.
Provides: Basic CAD Tools: 2D and 3D solid and wireframe, IGES interface, Robot Modelling: generate the required governing equations (iterative or closed form) automatically for "many" classes of robots Path Generation Kinematic Simulation with Collision Detection Dynamic Simulation (CimStation only at this point) I/O Operations.
John Craig, who wrote the book, Introduction to Robotics is head of Silma's R and D. Silma has a programming environment called SIL complete with its own PASCAL-like iterative language with graphics and robotics extensions. CimStation is built out of this language. This allows you to add your own functionality. E.g. your own path planner. You can also write C-code, compile it, and add it to the system.
Workspace 3 robot simulation: Kinematic modeller
Discrete event simulation Interactive creation of new mechanimsm
Library of standard robots
Advanced robot languages Dynamics simulator
Variables Forces and torques calculated
Subroutines Graphical representation of results
Loop structures
Sophisticated motion commands Text editor
Accurate representation of mechanisms Integral editor for track and
Calculation of cycle times teachpoint files
Collision detection
Solid 3-d rendering
Integrated CAD system Fast shaded animations in 256 colours
Constructive solid geometry
Library of standard 3d primitives Computer Aided Learning
Extruded polylines Simple authoring of training exercises
Spheres
Cones Calibration
Cylinders In-built robot and fixture
Boxes calibration system
Surfaces
Solids of rotation User Manuals
DXF and IGES import facilities Tutorial exercises
Example robots and workcells
The system is in use throughout Europe and the Far East in both Industry and
Education with several hundred seats. Sales in the USA are relatively recent.
Tecnomatix makes several packages for simulation including ones for Spot welding, Arc welding, Painting, Teleoperation (Martel), CMM and Drilling. They also have an open systems environment, ROSE, that allows user customization and interface design. ROBCAD itself allows robot modeling (library of 100 robots is supplied), collision free path generation, importation of IGES, VDAFS and SET files and direct interface with Catia and ComputerVision.
[GMF - the entry that used to be here, no longer supports OLPW-200, instead they are a Robcad reseller]
ARS MAGNA is available by anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.cs.yale.edu/pub/nisp/
NOTE: This is a beta-test version of EROS. It runs only under Macintosh Common Lisp version 2.0. Many of its features have not been tested (although it has been used in a few applications, so parts of it work quite well!) and the documentation is not very coherent.
EROS is available by anonymous ftp at: ftp://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov:pub/gat/eros.sit.hqx
This is an early version for beta testing only. It runs only under MCL 2.0. It will not run under any other version of Common Lisp, including MCL 1.3. (EROS relies heavily on Macintosh graphics and CLOS.) It also includes only a single example robot, so out of the box it doesn't do very much. You have to be willing to do a little hacking to use it as it currently stands. A future release will have more turnkey functionality, but it's pretty much an OEM product at this point.
Contact: Erann Gat net: gat@robotics.jpl.nasa.gov
This is essentially the same software run on Flakey, (robot at SRI used for research in AI), behaviors using fuzzy control (there's lots more on Flakey in terms of sensor interpretation and higher-level control, but I haven't ported that from LISP to C yet). There are three example behaviors implemented, showing dumb obstacle avoidance and goal achievement. There's not much documentation yet, but I will get some out over the next few months.
The intent is to make the simulator/controller suitable for a course in mobile robotics, and to have eventually a cheap physical platform that will imitate the simulator (or vice versa).
Available by anonymous ftp from: ftp://ftp.ai.sri.com/pub/konolige/erratic-ver1.tar.Z Uncompress, untar and check the README file for installation.
A collection of five tech reports on Flakey's fuzzy controller is also available at: ftp://ocean.ai.sri.com/pub/saffiott/flakey_papers_93.tar.Z
That directory contains an extensive manual, doc.ps (72 pages), as well as all the M-files.
Bemmel only displays the robot. It is a fast general-purpose display method which places separate objects in space depending on the homogeneous matrices it receives from simmel.
Connel is the controller, which must be designed by the user (in the distributed version, connel is a simple inverse kinematics routine. I didn't include my neural networks.)
The three programs use Unix sockets for communication. This means that
Simderella likes to sleep; that is, when nothing happens, no processor time will be used.
A Paper about Simderella.
The software is available as a compressed tar file from: Simderella Supported architectures: Sun (SunOS and Solaris), SGI, DEC Alpha, HP700, 386 et al running Linux)
[CMU used Simderella recently to facilitate software development and testing of the Shuttle servicing robot before the hardware and mechanics are available to test the various parts of the controller. it has also been linked to TCA calls and worked very well - nivek]
Disclaimer: I [Andrew] haven't used this software for years. If it malfunctions, don't sue me or Craig, we don't guarantee it. ftp://krang.vis.citri.edu.au/pub/robot
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:
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 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.
An underwater virtual world can comprehensively model all
salient functional characteristics of the real world in real time.
This virtual world is designed from the perspective of the robot,
enabling realistic AUV evaluation and testing in the laboratory. 3D
real-time graphics are our window into that virtual world.
Visualization of robot interactions within a virtual world permits
sophisticated analyses of robot performance that are otherwise
unavailable. Sonar visualization permits researchers to accurately
"look over the robot's shoulder" or even "see through the robot's
eyes" to intuitively understand sensor-environment interactions.
Distribution of underwater virtual world components enables
scalability and real-time response. The IEEE Distributed Interactive
Simulation (DIS) protocol is used for compatible live interaction with
other virtual worlds. Network access allows individuals remote
access. This is demonstrated via Multicast Backbone (MBone)
collaboration with others and World-Wide Web (WWW) access to pertinent
archived images, papers, datasets, software, sound clips, text and any
other computer-storable media.
You are welcome to copy the virtual world or pass along pointers to
it. It is my hope to make this the beginning of a large-scale
collaboration that uses the Multicast Backbone (MBone), Virtual
Reality Modeling Language (VRML), DIS and the Web as ways to
distribute 3D real-time graphics to a complete variety of operating
systems & hardware.
The virtual world and robot code (including Irix 5.3 binaries) are
available at the NPS AUV Virtual World page. Three-level robot code
compiles under gcc and has been tested under OS-9, SGI Irix and SunOS.
Point netscape, mosaic or another Web browser at: A tutorial on the Underwater Virtual World is available via
http://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/~auv/uvw_tutorial.html
The dissertation is online in PostScript format. The software
reference accompanying the dissertation is also available online in
hypertext (with connections to the latest software files). See
http://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/~brutzman/dissertation/
and
http://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/~auv/software_reference.html
Robotica
A Virtual World for an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
http://www.stl.nps.navy.mil/~auv
Last-Modified: Wed Oct 23 12:43:35 1996
Kevin Dowling <nivek@cmu.edu>