Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!news.Brown.EDU!qt.cs.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!wupost!monsanto.com!cajun!daship
From: daship@cajun
Subject: Re: PD robot simulator available
Message-ID: <1993Feb10.110308.1@cajun>
Lines: 80
Sender: news@tin.monsanto.com (USENET News System)
Organization: Monsanto Company
References: <1993Feb10.075622.28898@fwi.uva.nl>
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1993 11:03:08 GMT

In article <1993Feb10.075622.28898@fwi.uva.nl>, smagt@fwi.uva.nl (Patrick van der Smagt) writes:
> From my research in neural networks and robot control a
> robot simulator has evolved.  I have been working on and
> using this simulator for quite a while now, and suddenly
> got prompted to, at last, make it publicly available.  So,
> here it is!
> 
> Simderella is a robot simulator consisting of three programs:
> 	connel: the controller
> 	simmel: the simulator
> 	bemmel: the X-windows oriented graphics back-end
> Simmel is the part which actually simulates the robot.  It
> performs a few matrix multiplications, based on the Denavit
> Hartenberg method, calculates velocities with the Newton-Euler
> scheme, and communicates with the other two programs.  Bemmel
> only displays the robot.  It is a fast general-purpose display
> method which places separate objects in space depending on
> the homogeneous matrices it receives from simmel.  Connel is
> the controller, which must be designed by the user (in the
> distributed version, connel is a simple inverse kinematics
> routine.  I didn't include my neural networks.)
> 
> The three programs use Unix sockets for communication.  This
> means that
> 	1. you need sockets
> 	2. all the programs can run on different machines
> Since data communication is high-level (meaning, in this case,
> that I do not send doubles, integers, and so on, but encode them
> first), running the programs on different architectures is no
> problem.  In fact, it was thus designed that connel can, at the
> same time, control a real robot _and_ the simulated one.
> 
> Simderella likes to sleep; that is, when nothing happens, no
> processor time will be used.
> 
> The software is available as a compressed tar file called
> simderella.1.0.tar.Z via anonymous ftp from
> galba.mbfys.kun.nl (ip 131.174.82.73), directory 
> pub/neuro-software/pd.
> 
> Extract the simulator from the tar file by typing
> at the Unix command line
> 	Unix> zcat simderella.tar.Z | tar xf -
> or use your favourite extracting commands.
> In the simderella/ directory, type
>          Unix> make
> The sub-directories are recursively visited and executables
> are compiled and linked. 
> 
> The software has been compiled using gcc on SunOS running
> under X11R4/5 on Sun3, Sun4, Sun Sparc 1, 2, and 10, and
> Silicon Graphics architectures (using cc, of course, which
> is what the gnu compiler is called there).
> 
> If you're impatient, execute the thing as follows:
> 	cd bemmel; Zoscar & cd ..
> 	cd simmel; source env; simmel1 ns & cd ..
> 	cd connel; connel s
> all on one machine.  Then type commands like
> 	f 50 50 50
> 	k 50 50 50
> or move the mouse pointer in the bemmel window and press an `l' or
> `r' or `u' or `d' or ....
> 
> 						Patrick

(I'm sorry I included that whole post... I haven't figured out how the delete
works on this new system I'm using; a VT 1200 X-term on a VAX)

Anyway... Are there other PD programs available like the one above?  If
there are, where?  Is there a "Robotics Software Site" that has all the
latest and greatest PD robotic related software?  If not, why not?

(Excuse my ignorance if this is common knowledge... I'm a new reader and
generally ignorant anyway 8')

-Dan-

Email: DASHIP@CAJUN.MONSANTO.COM

