Essential Real-Time and Modeling tools for Robot Rapid Prototyping

Abstract

Rapid prototyping is essential in robotics. The Waterfall method is usually used to design complex systems, but this method has some drawbacks. Rapid Prototyping is a more recent approach, which is more suitable for real-time systems design We propose a set of three requirements in order to have a flexible real-time systems design environment. SYMOFROS, a symbolic modeling and simulation software developed by Canadian Space Agency is presented. A real-time simulation environment using parallel processors called RT-Lab is next described. Combined together, these tools provide suitable environment to do rapid prototyping, starting with a description of a mechanical structure down to the real-time simulation with a complex controller architecture.