About the Robotics Toolbox

The Robotics Toolbox for Scilab/Scicos (RTSS) has been developed at the Interdepartmental Research Center "E. Piaggio" by the student Matteo Morelli, as a project for the undergraduate robotics course at the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy.

RTSS is inspired by the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB written by Professor Peter I. Corke.

RTSS is free software and is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty.

Introduction and Key Features

RTSS provides many functions that are useful in the field of robotics to explore areas such as kinematics, dynamics and trajectory generation. It is intended for modeling and simulating robotic manipulators as well as for analyzing results obtained from experiments with real robots.

» Library of Scilab Macros

RTSS is based on a very general method of representing the kinematics and dynamics of serial-link manipulators. These parameters are encapsulated in Scilab objects and models are provided for well known robots such as the Puma 560 and the Stanford arm.

» Robotics Palette

RTSS also includes a library of Scicos blocks for use in constructing robot kinematic and dynamic models.

» Demos

RTSS comes with several demonstration scripts which show how the toolbox can be productively used in studying robotics. Demos give the user an insight into the use of RTSS for

• representing rigid motions of coordinate frames
• computing Cartesian and joint-space trajectories
• solving Forward Kinematics problems
• creating graphical animations of robot motions
• solving Inverse Kinematics problems
• learning about differential motions and manipulator Jacobians
• solving Inverse Dynamics problems
• solving Forward Dynamics problems
• constructing robot kinematic and dynamic models with Scicos

» Test Scripts

In addition, the user can run test scripts which permit to compare performances between the Scilab and C version of algorithm that computes inverse dynamics via recursive Newton-Euler formulation (RNE), for the following robot models:

• Puma 560
• Stanford arm

» Online Documentation

Lastly, detailed HTML help documentation, written in English language is provided for each Scilab function and Scicos block in the toolbox. Every help page is enriched with many examples which illustrate the usage of the corresponding Scilab function or Scicos block.

Screenshots

Some screenshots of RTSS in action can be seen by using the SourceForge.net screenshot system.