Supported by Westinghouse Savannah River Company through ERDA.
Supported by a DOE Predoctoral Fellowship in Integrated Manufacturing (John Hogan).
Supported by National Science Foundation (Jonathan Cameron).
A Multi-Body Simulator (MBSim) is an object-oriented system that models, simulates, and animates the kinematics and dynamics of robotic arms and vehicles. This system creates a three-dimensional graphical environment which can be used as a powerful tool in robotic design and control. In addition, MBSim incorporates rangefinder as well as ultrasonic sensor models to yield environmental feedback.
In fact, a motivation for developing MBSim stemmed from the realization that most comercially available packages are not as flexible as is often needed. For example, while it is rare for a typical system to handle industrial robots AND vehicles, it is quite uncommon for them to be able to handle sensors as well as a mechanism's kinematics and dynamics.
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To give you an idea of where MBSim is heading, our ultimate goal for MBSim is studying safe mechanism motion through sensor-based motion control. We will be testing new motion planning and control algorithms on numerous mechanisms in their typical environments. This is especially important for vehicles with car-like steering in highly constrained environments (e.g. parallel parking a Cadillac).