EE 570: Programming Laboratory 2

3D Manipulator Visualization and Forward Kinematics



Write a program to compute the forward (position) kinematics and display a manipulator in three dimensions. The program should take as inputs:

  1. the D-H Table and
  2. a series of correlated joint variables, q that describe the joint movement over time.
The program should output or show:
  1. Homogeneous Transformation Matrix relating end-effector position and orientation to the base frame;
  2. display of frames 1 to n (with ability to turn on/off);
  3. link offsets and lengths as cylinders (or fancier objects) to visualize robot (see figure below as example, be able to turn on/off).
example visualizaton
Manipulators for which visualization and forward kinematics should be tested (should work for others as well):
  1. Stanford
  2. SCARA
  3. PUMA 260
  4. Three-Link Planar RRR
  5. Two-Link Planar RP

Test your forward kinematics for a variety of q including moving them one joint at a time, and turn in results (values plus visualization) for the cases qi = 0 (rad or dist); qi = 1 (rad or dist), and qi = -1 (rad or dist).