🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul31.095144.11099@cs.nott.ac.uk> pre@cs.nott.ac.uk (Phillip Edwards) writes:
>I am trying to determine the state of the art in the field of
>robot modelling methods.  I shall present a view that there is
>little in the way of practical achievement and hope to be proved
>wrong!
>
>There are a number of graphical robot simulation systems about. 
>These only use kinematic modelling and are very good as planning
>tools, but any generated off-line programs need some tweaking
>before they can be used.
>

The CimStation software package now has the ability to calibrate
its kinematic model to the actual robot kinematics, by processing 
data collected from the robot. John Craig wrote a short article
about it in the March 92 issue of Robotics World. This is the
only commercial OLP software I know of which can do this.

But calibrating the robot is really only half the problem.
OLP applications usually try to model interaction with the 
environment, so the position of objects in the world must
also be calibrated. 

We are developing a system for the robotic maintenance of
Space Station using ground based control stations. The 
time delay and bandwidth constraints preclude teleoperation, 
so we use a simulation to predict what will happen. 
We calibrate the position of objects in the sim using 
information from the real world to make it work.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Lee Graves, graves@drseus.jsc.nasa.gov
Robotics, Lockheed-ESC, 2400 NASA Rd.1, C33, Houston,TX 77058
(713) 333-6714 (office), (713) 483-8219 (robot lab)