The goal of this project is to establish a graphic, interactive, physical-based robot control simulation environment. The simulation environment provides an ideal testing bed for new control algorithms. There are no hardware limitations. Since it is very easy to implement and adjust, it would help us greatly on determining the best physical properties to optimize control design. More importantly, the simulation provides a very user-friend teaching environment for robot behavior and control study. Since it is interactive and direct, it is much easier for students to study the dynamic behavior and control theories.

As examples, the following demos illustrate the basic ideas. The programs uses Java2 and Java3D APIs. In order to run the programs in your web browsers, Java plug-ins are required. You can simply install Java2 JRE (Java runtime environment) and Java3D JRE (Please use OpenGL version). Please make sure to install them before you run the programs.

The demos are designed to run as either applets or stand-alone applications. You can simply download the jar files and run them as stand-alone applications to overcome the network traffic ("java Robot" and "java Robot3Demo"). If you would like to have source code, please contact cheng@alum.mit.edu. Your comments are appreciated.

3D Graphics 2DOF Robot Arm Simulator;

3D Graphics 3DOF Robot Arms Dynamics Demo.

Note: The operation on these demos are very intuitive. Basically, the left mouse is for rotation, middle mouse (if you have one) is for zooming, and right mouse is for translation. Other operations are done through control panel. "Exit" button only works on application version.
Warning: Since Java3D requires somewhat hardware suport, particularly OpenGL support, it might not run properly in some machines. I have already found some problems when I run it on some TNT video card. Please let me know if you encounter any unreasonable problems. I will list them here accordingly.

If you are not able to view those plug-in demos, I put here some sceen-shots for you to have some senses of the program.

   (view larger one.)

     (view larger one.)

     (view larger one.)

Copyright 1999.