From CAD design to robot models and simulation tools. Test-case example using the Kassow 810 collaborative robot

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to introduce, in a tutorial form, a collection of procedures, tools and applications that can be used to explore robotics fundamentals and automatically generate kinematic and dynamic models from computer-aided design (CAD) packages, to create representations of the robot manipulator understudy so that a user can generate trajectories and to simulate and visualize the robot motion using several programming, simulation and developing tools. In this paper, the authors are particularly interested in advanced three-dimensional design packages such as Inventor and SolidWorks, interactive mathematical and simulation environments such as Matlab, Simulink, Simscape Multibody and Robot Operating System, and several application development languages such as C# and Python. A few of them will be used throughout the paper in a collection of examples that use the new Kassow 810 collaborative robot as a test-case demonstration. In the process, the authors expect readers to fully understand how to use all these tools to other machines and to their own designs.Design/methodology/approachConsequently, the paper follows a step-by-step practical procedure, fully tested and explained using the already mentioned state-of-the-art collaborative robot, guiding the reader from the design, modeling, simulation and application development phases, which may be applied to other machines and robotic designs.FindingsThe results clearly show that the procedure of starting from a CAD design to generate the kinematic and dynamic models of a robot manipulator create representations of the robot, generate trajectories and simulate/visualize the robot motion is feasible and accessible to a general user (using standard tools).Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the paper uses a few particular software packages, the concepts and kept general, which means that they can be used with other equivalent tools. With that objective in mind, the paper introduces the basic robotics concepts involved, further increasing in this way its tutorial structure.Originality/valueConsequently, the presented procedure has the inherent value of introducing robotics fundamentals in a practical way, but also of demonstrating how readers can build and explore advanced robotic designs using common design, simulation and programming tools.