Society of Robots - Robot Forum
Software => Software => Topic started by: frid4y on May 26, 2008, 12:05:12 PM
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Does anyone know how to use SimMechanics Toolbox of Matlab? I want to simulate the movement of my robotic arm as simple as it can be done. Maybe a book recommendation or something. I have Matlab 7 for Mechanics but has only 2 pages referring to SimMechanic and is not much of a help.
Thanks in advance.
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Matlab has a great help, check it , its almost a tutor or you can check if there is any documentation for the toolbox you are searching for in the mathworks website
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I've used SimMechanics a little. There is separate matlab help for simMechanics which is where to start, do the tutorials to get some feel of it first
Although my PhD is in Mechanics, I found it very nonintuitive and lost interest quickly. We had a student working with it this year that hit problems he couldn't solve and found there to be very small community using it when looking for help.
We now use some open source software (we model and control flexible robot arms), but its not very user friendly (the guy working here is part of the team writing it, so he finds it o.k ;D).
I guess the industry standard , would to be use ADAMS. Which would be a option if you could get your hands on it,
http://www.mscsoftware.com/products/adams.cfm?Q=131&Z=396&Y=397
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thank you very much for your help. it's not easy though to get my hands on the software ADAMS but it does not worth it for the time being. as for the tutorials i have seen some and read some stuff but they luck on further info. for instance there is a piston model in one that they don't give the motion actuator model. so it's a little hard for me to figure it out as i am an electrical engineering graduate and i don't know how mechanical stuff work. i only have basic knowledge on this stuff.
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Sorry I couldn't be of more help. It just a little tricky to learn, but I'm sure you'll get the hang of it.
Maybe this (if you haven't seen it already) might be of some help, they seem to start with a robot arm for a cad program and work from there in simMechanics.
http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/physmod/mech/index.html?/access/helpdesk/help/toolbox/physmod/mech/f3-16241.html
If you have access to a university email address, you can download autodesk inventor (student edition) for free (http://students6.autodesk.com/?lbon=1)
then draw you arm and maybe maybe import it into simMechanics like above. There might even be some dynamic analysis software built in to autodesk inventor, but I'm not definite.
David :D
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I want to simulate the movement of my robotic arm as simple as it can be done.
Just use any type of graphing software. Each joint will be a point in space (calculated from your kinematics), and have the graphing software draw a line between each.
Excel can even do this in 2D.
As for ADAMS, I haven't used it in 5+ years, but I remember it not being very intuitive or user friendly . . .
I'm quite positive if you google around that you can find robot arm simulation software.
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i'm modeling a manipulator too, using SimMechanics. I'm encountering some problems as well and still can't solve it. But I thnk I can giv you some suggestion
maybe you can try this:- draw your robotic arm in SolidWorks software, then use SolidWorks-to-SimMechanics translator to convert your drawing into Matlab-Simulink's blocks. Then open your matlab, build the blocks by using SimMechanics toolbox. The simulation will appear as like your SolidWorks drawings and you can determine its movement
you might need to adjust and put some actuator+sensor into it, dependng on your robot design
you need to have: Matlab (I recommend 2009a and above), SolidWorks-to-SimMechanics Link (download it from internet), SolidWorks software