Computer Integration to Develop Robot

Computer simulation in general offers tools that make research of distant, dangerous, or very expensive phenomena easily possible. Computer simulation is a method for forecasting consecutive states of complex systems basing on their models. The simulation can also serve to foresee behaviors of objects which not yet exist, as for instance the prototype of the Production Robot. Recently years, the significance of computer simulation considerably grew thanks to accessible high-end PC equipment, large memory, equipped with very fast processors, and high-resolution graphic cards.

Integration of CAD/CAM, CAE tools with simulation software is becoming more and more common and significant. The usage of virtual reality and animations helps presenting outcomes of such simulations. The simulation should be able to depict all possible errors already on the virtual stage of designed system. The testing designed possibility of system through simulations is commonly used during designing control systems.

The synthesizing advantage a dynamic model of the system is the possibility to verify the compatibility with requirements and to verify the design before actually building first physical prototypes. The modification needs to be applied only to the model in the case of any errors on the design stage, what is considerably cheaper and quicker than applying changes to the product already build.

Special attention during the modeling process should be paid to the Matlab/Simulink environment. A huge advantage of this software is the possibility to design complex objects of mixed natures such as modeling of the mechanical, electric and control system in one common environment. From the correctly prepared model the environments allows generating C code. This article described closely the process of modeling dynamics in the SimMechanics environment on the example of a current research project. The research will focus on the synthesis of inverse dynamics model for the robot, and finally on de- signing appropriate controller on the real object.