A Graphic Simulator for the Study of Robotic Tracking and Catching Operations

Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a real time robot simulator running on a Silicon Graphics Personal IRIS workstation. In addition to the simulator, we introduce a new approach to compute the inverse kinematic functions whose domain of solution is not limited to the manipulator’s workspace. Using this approach, every point in the Cartesian space leads to a real solution when used as data for the inverse kinematic problem. The solution gives the minimum distance between the end-effector and the prescribed point in the Cartesian space. The proposed inverse kinematic functions are of great interest for tracking, approach and catching operations where the object to be reached or tracked by the manipulator is inside or outside the robot’s workspace. With the simulator, we can easily build any kind of manipulator and describe it using the Hartenberg-Denavit convention.