Newsgroups: comp.robotics,news.answers Path: rwsys!trsvax!utacfd.uta.edu!news.oc.com!news.kei.com!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!das-news.harvard.edu!cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!nivek From: nivek+@cs.cmu.edu (Kevin Dowling) Subject: comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) part 2/2 Message-ID: Followup-To: poster Summary: This posting contains a list of Frequently Asked Questions and their answers about robotics. It should be read by anyone who wishes to post to the comp.robotics newsgroup Sender: news@cs.cmu.edu (Usenet News System) Supersedes: Nntp-Posting-Host: j.gp.cs.cmu.edu Reply-To: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon References: Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 00:40:18 GMT Approved: news-answers-request@MIT-Edu Expires: Sun, 18 Jul 1993 00:39:51 GMT Lines: 1131 Xref: rwsys comp.robotics:5189 news.answers:8849 Archive-name: robotics-faq/part2 Last-modified: Sun Feb 14 23:26:33 1993 This is part 2 of 2 of the comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. This FAQ addresses commonly asked questions relating to robotics. Part 2 [use the +++ to assist in searching] +++Sensors +++Wireless Communication +++Suppliers and sources for Parts +++Hero Robots +++Puma Manipulators +++Simulators +++Real-Time Operating Systems +++Robot Controller Survey +++Books +++Acknowledgements ____________________________________________________________________________ This post, as a collection of information, is Copyright 1993 Kevin Dowling. Distribution through any means other than regular Usenet channels must be by permission. The removal of this notice is forbidden. Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to: Kevin Dowling phone: 412.268.8830 Robotics Institute fax: 412.682.1793 Carnegie Mellon University email: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213 ___________________________________________________________________________ +++Sensors: This list covers only the most frequently requested types of robot sensors. These include point-range sensors, cameras, and acoustic devices. See Sensors magazine directory for a large and comprehensive list. This list covers the following: [use === to search] ===cameras ===inertial measurement devices ===laser rangefinders ===force/torque sensors ===sonar sensors ===position determination devices ===pan/tilt mechanisms ===shape memory devices ===Cameras There are a large number of cameras on the market and even many consumer products such as the smaller camcorders are inexpensive and suitable for imaging applications. I'll try to list some different and unusual ones here. Note that although some of these cameras are very small many of them are appended to a large box of electronics via a cable that supplies power and transmits video. For mobile applications DC power inputs may be an isse as well. Sony Component Products 15 Essex Road, Paramus, NJ 07652 tel: (201) 368-5188 fax: (201) 368-3514 Sony XC/999/999P is a nice small color CCD camera the size of a microphone. CCD resolution is 768Hx493V. The 999 is NTSC and the 999P is the PAL format. XC-75 has small camera head and separate electronics. Toshiba IK-M40A -- head is 1.5" long, 5/8" diameter Panasonic GP-KS152 -- head is 1 3/8" long, 15/32" diameter CCTV Corporation 315 Hudson Street New York, NY 10013 tel: (800) 221-2240 fax: (212) 463-9758 CCTV makes a number of small CCD surveillance cameras. Some as small as a pack of cigarettes that sell for less than $300. CIDTech has some really nice ones with CID instead of CCD, especially good for machine vision, no blooming, fast image grabbing. ====Inertial measurement devices This includes such devices as accelerometers such as accelerometers, gyros, and inertial devices used for measuring orientation or acceleration of moving vehicles. Accelerometers are devices for measuring the rate of change in velocity and can provide estimations of distance or be used to detect high forces. KVH Industries 110 Enterprise Center Middletown, RI 02840 (401) 847-3327 Nice small well-designed units that provide heading data. About $1K w/ RS232 adapter. Lucas NovaSensor 1055 Mission Court Fremont, CA 94539 (510) 490-9100 Lucas makes a 1"x1"x0.5" accelerometer for about $200. Good noise immunity but fragile. Humphrey Wide variety of gyro and accelerometer devices. BEI - Systron Donner 2700 Systron Drive, Concord, CA 94518-1399 tel: (510) 682-6161 fax: (510) 671-6590 GyroChip - a very small solid state angular rate sensor. Based a quartz tuning fork device - all support electronics are included. Max range available: +/-10 deg/sec to +/-1000 deg/sec. Input +/- 5VDC Output scale +/- 2.5VDC. Systron Donner also makes a variety of linear accelerometers and inertial measurement products. ====Laser rangefinders There are a variety of laser rangefinding devices that have been built and used over the past 8 years or so for robotics. The 3D devices are still large, power hungry and heavy but give very nice images suitable for fast map building and navigation work. Expect to pay over $80K for these time-of-flight devices. Most AM Lidars measure phase shift between outgoing and reflected beams. A mirror system rasters the beam forming a video-camera-like image. Some devices supply the reflectance image as well as range which is nice for corresponding the two. Comprehensive references include: P. Besl, ``Active, Optical Range Imaging Sensors'', Machine Vision and Applications, v. 1, p. 127-152, 1988. A longer version of Besl's paper appears in ``Advances in Machine Vision: Architectures and Applications'', J. Sanz (ed.), Springer-Verlag, 1988. Other good surveys are Ray Jarvis' article in IEEE TPAMI v5n2 and Nitzan's article in IEEE PAMI v10n2. A number of laboratory works have also demonstrated FM or chirp systems which can be highly accurate (e.g. high resolution elevation maps of coins) but these are very specialized and I don`t know of commercial devices currently. ERIM (Environmental Research Institute of Michigan) ERIM has built a number of custom AM laser rangefinders including those used in the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle) program. CMU and Martin Marietta have both used this systems in extensive work. Basic system was a 128x64 2fps 20m (ambiguity interval) system. Odetics Odetics has made a number of smaller laser scanners. That is, smaller than their larger ERIM and Perceptron brethren. I have not heard any independent reviews of the product however. Perceptron A spin-off of ERIM, Perceptron has also built a number of AM laser rangefinders. CMU and Caterpillar have used these for map building and obstacle avoidance work in rough terrain navigation. 128x128 programmable up to 2048x2048 through tilt, 2fps, programmable tilt on nodding mirror. About $90K Schwarz Electro-Optics 3404 N. Orange Blossom Trail Orlando, FL 32804 tel: (407) 298-1802 fax: (407) 297-1794 Schwarz makes some very nice point range laser ranging devices. These devices are slightly bigger than a soda can. About $6K. CMU experience for use in simulated unmanned air vehicle platform worked well. Their MARS (marine angle range system) is a rotating laser device that reflects off targets in the environment. Max range up to 1000meters using corner prisms. Accuracy +/- 1m. Erebus (Dante) Scanner used Schwarz device as base. Origin Instruments 854 Greenview Drive Grand Praire, TX 750750-2438 tel: (214) 606-8740 fax: (214) 606-8741 The Dynasight sensor is a 3-D optical radar that provides real-time 3-D measurements of passive targets with sub-millimeter resolution. Automatic search and track is provided, eye-safe operation and no adjustments or alignment required. Original application was head tracking of computer users but end- effector tracking is also viable. Operatin range depends on target size 0.1-1.5m for 7mm target, 0.3-4m for 25mm target and 1 to 6m for 75mm targets. RS-232 interface. Accuracies 1mm cross range and 4mm down range, resolutions 0.1mm cross range and 0.4mm down range. A number of labs have built light stripe devices using projected light LCD shutters and laser line projectors determine distance through geometry (as opposed to directly measuring distance through time-of-flight means) One common need is that of generating the laser line. LaserMax Rochester, NY Manufactures semiconductor laser diode packages and cylindrical lenses. Packages and small and rugged. Recent power tools such as miter saws and radial arm saws are using laser line projection - these may be available cheaply as spare parts. ===Force and Torque Sensors: California Cybernetics 10322 Sherman Grove Sunland, CA 91040 (818) 353-5991 (818) 951-3889 (fax) Six DOF F-T devices. JR3 22 Harter Avenue Woodland, CA 95695 (916) 661-3677 6-DOF force-torque sensors. Strain gage technology. Newer packages have all electronics built into the sensor. Make some high-force devices as well. CMU's Ambler used JR3's on all the feet. Assurance Technologies (ATI) (formerly Lord Industrial Automation) 503D Highway 70 East Garner, North Carolina 27529 tel: (919) 772-0115 fax: (919) 772-8259 Largest supplier of muli-axis force sensors. Use silicon rather than foil strain gages for lower strain levels and increased life. F/T sensor ratings from +/- 15lbs to +/- 150lbs (+/- 15 in-lbs to +/- 600 in-lbs) weights are 0.4 and 2.2 lbs for the 4 available sensors. Serial or parallel digital interface or analog interface. ATI also makes robotic tool-changers and an RCC device for assembly operations. An ATI sensor is also incorporated in the Hughes SMARTee end-effector. Hughes STX 4400 Forbes Blvd Lanham, MD 20706 tel: (301) 794-5016 fax: (301) 306-0963 A 6-dof end-effector with automatic load sensing and compensation. Control modes include position control (cartesian with user spec-ed poses and frames), impedence and force control modes. Programmable behaviors (sliding, hinge, move-to-touch, guarded move, follow etc), open architecture (VxWorks, VME, user-linakable libraries) and a lot more. Interfaces available included RS-232, ethernet, RS-422 and SCSI. Pretty amazing end-effector! Cybernet 1919 Green Road Suite B-101 Ann Arbor, MI 48105 tel: (313) 668-2567 fax: (313) 668-8780 email: PER-force - A 6dof compact force-reflecting controller. Can be used for teleoperationor interactive graphics applications. ===Sonar sensors Acoustic time-of-flight devices have been around for awhile now. The ubiquitous Polaroid device is cheap and easily integrated and has has found wide use in robotic devices. Other companies have developed nice complete turnkey sonar devices though and Polaroid is no longer the only choice. Polaroid 119 Windsor St, Cambridge, MA 02139 (800) 225-1000 ordering (800) 225-1618 technical assistance Polariod Ultrasonic Components Group offers two ultrasonic ranging kits: Specs are: Distance range: 0.26 to 10.7 meters Resolution: Nominal +- 3mm to 3m, +-1% over entire range Sonar acceptance angle: approx. 20 degrees Power Requirement: 6VDC, 2.5 Amps (1 mS pulse), 150mA quiescent Weight: Transducer, 8.2gm Ranging module, 18.4 gm Designer's Kit: 1 transducer, 1 ranging module, electronics display accurate to 1/10th meter. Cost is $169 NEW Piezotransducer kit 1"-50' +/- 1% RS-232 port and analog output breadboard real estate $299 OEM kit: 2 transducers, 2 ranging modules. Cost is $99. Siemans - nice complete sensor package, 5 degree cone angle Massa - components Texas Instruments Type SN28827 Sonar Ranging Module See TI Applications Notes D2780 Under $50, needs only 5VDC Not sure if these units are still manufactured but they are often in surplus catalogs. ===Position determination Noncontact, cabled measurement of 6DOF's. Virtual reality applications. System ranges can be as small as a tabletop and can extend for kilometers. All measurements are given in metric unless spec sheets appear in English units only. All pricing is in $US. Polhemus Inc (802) 655-3139 (802) 655-1439 (fax) Burlington, VT 3Space, Isotrak, FasTrak: Electromagnetic devices for sensing xyz and rotations remotely. Limited to 1m or so radius. Sensitive to metallic objects in vicinity. Approx $3k Ascension Technology (802) 655-7879 (802) 655-5904 The Bird. A 6d0f measuring device much like the Pohlhemus device. Denning Mobile Robots 21 Concord Street Wilmington, MA 01887 tel: (508) 658-7800 fax: (508) 658-2492 LaserNav 2: rotating laser (Class 1 eyesafe) scans barcode targets in area and returns target angle. This is combined with target location to provide vehicle position and heading. RS-232 interface. Caterpillar also has a rotating laser device for it's SGV products for factory Automation. They license the Cedeglec (nee GEC) developed technologies. Video systems Selspot - used for biomechanical applications. ===Pan/Tilt devices A common robotic need. Most pan-tilts sold today by companies such as Pelco and Vicon are for CCTV applications for continuous scanning or remote operation. At most these will have pots for feedback. Directed Perception 1451 Capuchino Avenue, Burlingame, CA 94010 (415) 342-9399 Computer controlled pan-tilt unit Model PTU-33-17.5 Weighs 1kg and can support ~1.5kg camera payload. Very nice specs: 200 deg/sec slew, 3-4arc-min accuracy, RS-232 interface, About $1200. CCTV Corporation 315 Hudson Street New York, NY 10013 tel: (800) 221-2240 fax: (212) 463-9758 Standard CCTV pan-tilt devices like those from Vicon and others. Inexpensive but no computer control. $557 - $1400 CameraMan CameraMan is a pan/tilt device built to support any camcorder and has a wireless interface to an external remote control. 360 deg pan and 50 deg of tilt. The unit is made by ParkerVision and sold through Columbia AudioVideo (and probably other suppliers) TeleRobotics International, Inc. 7325 Oak Ridge Hwy Suite 104 Knoxville, TN 37931 tel: (615) 690-5600 fax: (615) 690-2913 An all-electronic pan/tilt/zoom resampler. That is, they put a box behind a camera with a fish-eye lens. The box has digital inputs for pan, tilt, zoom, rotation. The box resamples the video signal and produces an output as though the image were acquired by a camera with those parameters. Used as an alternative to pan/tilt devices. A number of undersea companies make pan-tilt devices as well. Remote Ocean Systems 5111-L Santa Fe Street San Diego, CA 92109 (619) 483-3902 Underwater P/T systems, expensive $6K but very nicely packaged RSI Research Sidney, BC (604) 656-0101 Underwater pan-tilts Photosea 6377 Nancy Ridge Drive San Diego, CA 92121 (619) 452-8903 underwater pan-tilts including Cobra, very small design. Telemetrics Hawthorne, NJ (201) 423-0347 Computer controlled P/T devices - fairly large though. Zebra Kinesis (spin-off of Zebra Robotics) Jeff Kerr (415) 328-8884 Small Pan/tilt head. ===Shape memory materials: Nickel-titanium alloys were first discovered by the Naval Ordinance Laboratory decades ago and the material was termed NiTinOL. These materials have the intriguing property that they provide actuation through cycling of current through the materials. It undergoes a 'phase change' exhibited as force and motion in the wire. Mondotronics 524 San Anselmo Ave., #107 San Anselmo, CA 94960 tel: (415) 455-9330 (800) 374-5764 fax: (415) 455-9333 net: A number of muscle wire (nitinol) projects including a small walking machine. Book and sample kit with 1m each of 50,100 and 150 um wire - enough to build all 14 projects in book. Memry Technologies 57 Commerce Drive Brookfield, CT 06804 tel: (203) 740-7311 fax (203) 775-2359 Memry sell a Mitsubishi developed polyurethane based Shape Memory Polymer. The material undergoes property changes in hardness, flexibility, elastic modulus and vapor permeability under temperature change. Medical applications are one series of applications for this material. ____________________________________________________________________________ +++Wireless Communication Tethers are sometimes impractical and at best an annoyance. Digital communication via RF and IR links is becoming cheaper and a variety of companies are providing solutions. For basic serial line communication a wide variety of radio modems are available that use fixed frequencies or spread spectrum techniques. In many cases they are also transparent. That is, you plug them directly into serial ports on the robot and off-board computing directly. Higher bandwidths such as Ethernet or high speed synchronous serial require different hardware. With high speed serial you may even be able to SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocal) instead of LANs. Video: For regular frame rate video over relatively short distances it's hard to beat the price and availability of several consumer products in the $100 range. Check local stores or place like the Sharper Image (Rabbit is one of the companies making these units) Ethernet: There are some related articles in the Feb/93 Byte Magazine. Proxim Inc. 295 North Barnardo Ave. Mountain View, CA 94043 tel: (415) 960-1630 fax: (415) 964-5181 A product announcement for wireless LAN board on p.68 in May/92 Byte Magazine Price: $495 Range: 800 ft. Data Rate: 242 Kbps Channels: 3 Telesystems SLW 85 Scarsdale Road, Suite 201 Don Mills, Ontario, Canada ARLAN radio LAN We've used ARLAN with the Ambler work and probably will continue to use it. It's an ethernet bridge and it smart about routing traffic across the repeater. The 620 is about $5K. Can be used without a license in the US. (spread spectrum) 6 miles. "Altair" Motorola Radio-Telephone Systems Group, Arlington Heights, ILL (708)632-5000 Motorola AltairNet 18GHz-based system design for wireless, indoors networking. The boxes are fairly large, about the size of a shoebox, and are relocatable but not portable. Problem is that is really isn't for mobile applications. Area is really like swiss cheese. Not a problem for fine adjustment for the non-portable applications but a big problem for mobile devices. NCR sells the WaveLAN, which has about a 1Mbit/sec data rate. Not exactly "ethernet", but interfaceable to most networks using MS-DOS boxes as routers. Tetherlink in California is experimenting with a 2Mbit/sec cellular system that is designed for roving portables. O'Neil and GRE America provide bidirectional 19.2Kps RS-232 links that you can run a terminal emulator or SLIP over, range about 100 ft. Cylink 310 N. Mary Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94086 tel: (408) 735-5800 fax: (408) 735-6643 AirLink - series of highspeed synch or async modems to 256kb/s. Interfaces include V.11, RS-232, EIA-530. Spread spectrum device operating in 902-928Mhz range. A handful of other companies have units in the 250Kbps range that are designed to plug into the parallel port of a PC or laptop and emulate a Dlink-like ethernet adapter. You still need to use an MS-DOS box to interface it to an existing network. ____________________________________________________________________________ +++Robot parts: Suppliers of useful mechanical and electrical components. Allied Devices 2365 Milburn Avenue, PO Box 502 Bladwin, NY 11510 (516) 223-9100 (516) 223-9172 (fax) Standard precision mechanical components American Science and Surplus (708) 475-8440 Winfred M. Berg 499 Ocean Ave., East Rockaway, LI, NY 11518 (516) 599-5010 Precision Mechanical Components C&H Sales Pasadena, CA (818) 796-2628 (800) 325-9465 Surplus parts. Motors etc. McMaster-Carr Supply Company PO box 440 New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0440 tel: (908) 329-3200 fax: (908) 329-3772 An amazing catalog of 100's of thousands of parts. Lots of mechanical things not much for electronics, computingbut almost everything else. Mendelson Electronics Co., Inc (800) 422-3525 Small Parts Inc. 6891 NE Third Ave PO Box 381966 Miami, FL 33238-1966 (305) 557-8222 fax (305) 751-6217 Lots of neat small supplies including: materials, metal stock, fasteners, tools etc. Servo Systems 115 Main Road PO Box 97 Montville, NJ 07045-9299 (201) 335-1007 fax (201) 335-1661 Surplus pieces and prices, motors, actuators, geardrives, controllers, robots, encoders, transducers, amplifiers. Herbach and Rademan 401 E. Erie Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19134 (215) 426-1708 Lots of surplus stuff including AC and DC motors. Nordex 50 Newton Road Danbury, CT 06810-6216 Gears, cams, universals etc. Seitz Box 1398 Torrington, CT 06790 (203) 243-5115 drive components, gears etc. Stock Drive Products 2101 Jericho Turnpike Bobx 5416 New Hyde Park, NY 11042-5416 (516) 328-3300 (516) 326-8827 (fax) Great set of handbooks of thousands of components. Edmund Scientific 101 E. Gloucester Pike Barrington, NJ 08007-1380 (609) 573-6250 order (609) 573-6260 customer service Lots of optics, science and educational items. A little high priced, but nice selection. PIC Design PO Box 1004 Benson Road Middlebury, CT 06762-1004 (800) 243-6125 (except CT) (203) 758-8272 Bearings, clutches, brakes, couplings, tools, belts, pulleys, gears etc. Any technical library should have catalogs from the larger distributors. These include McMaster-Carr, Grainger, Allied, Newark, etc. ____________________________________________________________________________ +++Hero robots: Heros are no longer being made but Heath (Zenith) still offers some replacement parts. They had about 8 years of sales: 4,000 Hero Jr's, 3,000 Hero 2000's, 14,000 assembled Hero 1's. Ones with less capability didn't do as well but higher priced ones did ok in the market. Service and maintainability are a problem due to the sheer number of bolts, pulleys, boards, sensors, cables etc. Used ones can be picked up cheap - caveat emptor. Heathkit [has gone out of business] Benton Harbor, MI order line (800) 253-0570 tech line (616) 982-3980 _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Puma manipulators: Pumas are probably the most common robot in university laboratories and one of the most common assembly robots. Designed by Vic Schienman many years ago, the Puma (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) was produced for many years by Unimation (later purchased by Westinghouse and sold at a loss later to Staubli, a Swiss company) Found in many university labs as well. PUMA singularities: The PUMA has three singularities: the ``alignment'' singularity (wrist is as close to the axis of joint 1 as it can get), the ``elbow'' singularity (elbow is fully extended or folded up; the latter is not possible because of joint limits), and the wrist singularity (the axes of joints 4 and 6 are aligned). The angles corresponding to these depend on the Denavit-Hartenburg (DH) parameter assignment. For the PUMA, the definitions given in [1] are perhaps the most commonly used Using these, and letting A2, A3, D3, and D4 denote the translational DH offsets, the singularities occur when the following are true: Alignment: D4*sin(ang2+ang3) + A2*cos(ang2) - A3*cos(ang2+ang3) == 0 Elbow: sin(ang3 - atan2(A3,D4)) == 0 Wrist: sin(ang5) == 0 Typical offset values for the PUMA 560 are A2 = 431.80 D3 = 149.09 A3 = 20.32 D4 = 433.070 [information provided by John Lloyd ] Trident Robotics and Research, Inc. 2516 Matterhorn Drive Wexford, PA 15090-7962 (412) 934-8348 Trident makes boards for replacing the VAL computer inside a PUMA with the computer of your choice. There is an interface for VMEbus, Multibus, and PC-AT bus. (An IndustryPack interface is in development.) This board set allows memory-mapped access to the motors and sensors of the standard PUMA 560, 260 and 760 series. It's an interface board with 6 encoder counters, 8 D/A's, 8 A/D's and some digital I/O. Useful references: [1] Richard Paul, Brian Shimano, and Gordon Mayer, ``Kinematic Control Equations for Simple Manipulators''. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Vol SMC-11, No. 6, June 1981. [2] B Armstrong, O Khatib, and J. Burdick The Explicit Dynamic Model and Inertial Parameters of the PUMA 560 Arm Proceedings IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation, April 1986 San Francisco, CA pp510-518 _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Simulators: Simulation allows researchers, designers and users to construct robots and task environments for a fraction of the cost and time of real systems. They differ significantly from traditional CAD tools in that they allow study of geometries, kinematics, dynamics and motion planning. This list is NOT a comparative analysis of the different systems but rather a list of systems that are available. Ars Magna: The ARS MAGNA robot simulator provides an abstract world in which a planner controls a mobile robot. The simulator also includes a simple graphical user-interface which uses the CLX interface to the X window system. Version 1.0 of the ARS MAGNA simulator is documented in Yale Technical Report YALEU/DCS/RR #928, "ARS MAGNA: The Abstract Robot Simulator". This report is available in the distribution as a Postscript(tm) file, as well as from Paula Murano Yale University Department of Computer Science P.O. Box 2158 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Email: Comments to Sean Engelson: ARS MAGNA is available by anonymous ftp: location: ftp.cs.yale.edu directory: pub/nisp filenames: ***** CADSI PO Box 203 Oakdale, IA 52319 (800) 383-1322 (319) 337-8968 DADS - kinematics and dynamics package. Have ProEngineer to CADSI interface. Supports rigid and flexible body analysis. Animation and interfaces to FEA/FEM and CAD programs. Deneb Robotics, Inc. 3285 Lapeer Road West PO Box 214687 (313) 377-6900 Product: IGRIP Platforms: SPARCs, (SGI's?) Cost: US$50-$60,000. Allows offline programming, dynamics capability etc. Mechanical Dynamics Inc. 2301 Commonwealth Blvd Ann Arbor, MI 48105 (313) 944-3800 ADAMS dynamics package Silma/Cimstation 1601 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road Cupertino, California 95014 (408) 725 8908 Product: CimStation Platforms: SGI-4D, SUN SparcStation, Apollo, Intergraph, Computervision, HP, IBM Risc6000 and DEC. Cost: Base system around $55K (commercial license) They also have a University Partnership Program to enable universities to purchase CimStation for around $20K US and $25K International. Provides: Basic CAD Tools: 2D and 3D solid & wireframe, IGES interface, Robot Modelling: generate the required governing equations (iterative or closed form) automatically for "many" classes of robots Path Generation Kinematic Simulation with Collision Detection Dynamic Simulation (CimStation only at this point) I/O Operations John Craig of "Introduction to Robotics" fame is head of Silma's R&D. Silma has a programming environment called SIL complete with its own PASCAL-like iterative language with graphics and robotics extensions. CimStation is built out of this language. This allows you to add your own functionality. E.g. your own path planner. You can also write C-code, compile it, and add it to the system. Comutek 1223 Peoples Avenue Troy, NY 12180 tel: (518) 276 2817 fax: 518 276 638 contact: Vinay Joshi Products: Work-Out Cost: Around $25000. Tecnomatix Technologies/Robcad 39750 Grand River Avenue Suite A-3 Novi, MI 48375 tel: (313) 471-6140 fax: (313) 471-6147 Platforms: HP, Silicon Graphics, IBM and Sun Tecnomatix makes several packages for simulation including ones for Spot welding, Arc welding, Painting, Teleoperation (Martel), CMM and Drilling. They also have an open systems environment, ROSE, that allows user customization and interface design. ROBCAD itself allows robot modeling (library of 100 robots is supplied), collision free path generation, importation of IGES, VDAFS and SET files and direct interface with Catia and ComputerVision. [GMF - the entry that used to be here, no longer supports OLPW-200, instead they are a Robcad reseller] Auto Simulations, Inc. 655 Medical Drive Bountiful, UT 84010 ph# 801 298 1398 telex 801 298 8186 contact: Teresa Francis, ext 330 Products: AutoMod II Platforms: ? Cost: ? _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Real-Time Operating Systems This is an abridged list of Dave Stewart's FAQ on RTOS'. See comp.real-time and news.answers for that FAQ. Below is a list of both commercial and research Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) which are being used around the world for implementing robotic systems. Only the names and addresses of the distributors are included. Since the available features of each are constantly changing, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are greatly a matter of opinion and target application, no such descriptions are given. Commercial RTOS: * iRMX III Runs on Intel 80X86-based computers U.S.A.: Intel Corporation 3065 Bowers Avenue Santa Clara, California 95051 tel (408) 987-8080 * LynxOS Runs on wide variety of platforms, including Motorola, Intel, Sun, and Hewlett Packard. Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc 16780 Lark Los Gatos, CA 95030 tel (408) 354-7770 fax (408) 354-7085 * OS-9 Runs on Motorola MC680X0-based single board computers. Microware System Corporation 1900 N.W. 114th St. Des Moines, Iowa 50322 tel (515) 224-1929 * pSOS+ Runs on a variety of Motorola 680X0 and 88100, and Intel 80386 computers. Requires a host workstation or personal computer if pASSPORT+ real-time programming environment is to be used. Software Components Group, Inc. 1731 Technology Drive San Jose, CA 95110 tel (408) 437-0700 fax (408) 437-0711 * VRTX Runs on a wide variety of processors, including Motorola 680X0, Intel 80X86 and 80960, National Semiconductor series 3200. Ready Systems 470 Potrero Avenue P.O.Box 60217 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 (800) 228-1249 fax (214) 991-8775 * VxWorks Runs on a wide variety of MC680X0 and SPARC-based single board computers. Requires a workstation for program developments. Widely used in Unix environments for realtime work. Wind River Systems Inc. 1000 Atlantic Avenue Alameda, CA 94501 (800) 545-9463 fax (415) 814-2010 Research RTOS that are distributed: * Chimera II Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers. Requires a Sun workstation for program development U.S.A.: Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University 5000 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213 ATTN: David B. Stewart tel (412) 268-7120 fax (412) 268-3890 email: chimera@ri.cmu.edu * Harmony Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers Canada: Division of Electrical Engineering National Research Council of Canada Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0R6 ref: NRCC Tech Report No. 30081 Robot Control C Library (RCCL) A robot programming environment embedded in C/UNIX. A graphics simulator is provided which supports the PUMA, Stanford, and ``Elbow'' manipulators. The system can be compiled on SGIs (so the Indigo should be fine), and the graphics runs under either X or GL. You can get the system from RCIM for a small fee to cover copying and shipping. If you are interested send mail to: John Lloyd Research Center for Intelligent Machines lloyd@curly.mcrcim.mcgill.edu McGill University, Montreal (514) 398-8281 Fax: (514) 398-7348 _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Survey of Robot Development Environments Willie Lim has compiled an list of many robotics groups and their respective hardware and software development environments. This list is the synopsis of the information that Willie received. See Willie's post for more details. Please send updates, additions, corrections, etc. to: Updated: Wed Jan 6 17:07:09 1993 Organization Robot Development Languages & Type HW Environment SW Enviroment ============= ==== ============== ============= Alcatel Alsthom Indoor robot SPARC II, VME proc VxWorks, MOTIF Recherche (AAR) Outdoor robot Brown U. Mobile robots SPARC I & II, OS/9, GNU Emacs, Xlib, VME 68030 MOTIF, Forth, C, C++ CMU a) SM^2(walker) VME 68020 & 68030, Chimera II RTOS, C, Sun Sun tools b) AMBLER VME 68020 & 68030, MOTIF, VxWorks, SPARC II, Iris X windows, C c) Mobile Mani- Z8088s, Sun IPC & ELC, X Window, Lisp, C, Hero pulator NeXT Basic d) Mobile robot SPARC, Iris, Mac, X windows, Openwindows, VME, Maspar, Titan VxWorks, Chimera RTOS, TCA, GIL, LISP e) Navlab Sun-4 X windows, C Colorado Sch. Denning MRV-3 Sparc IIs, IPXs, C, X11, Khoros, of Mines IBM RS/6000s potential fields X11 visualization tool (homemade) Colorado St. 6-legged robot 68HC11EVM, AT C Cornell U. 2 mobile robots Gespak 68000, Intel Scheme, Lucid Lisp (robot with 80c196, Sun(?) tank-tread base coming) Cray Research(?)Mobile robot MC68HC16EBV, 386 Assembler Georgia Tech Denning DRV-1 SUN IPC, Decstation, X windows, C, & MRV-II Microvax II Lisp Grumman CRC SmartyCat Mac II's/IIci's, C, CLOS, LISP, SAL (Cybermotion uExplorer, SGI(soon) VxWorks(soon) K2A) 68030 VME board(soon) IBM TJ Watson TJ, TJ2 Symbolics, RS/6000, LISP, CLOS, CLIM, (1989?-1992) 286, 386, Suns C, X-windows, MOTIF, GNU Emacs ISX Corp Subsumption Mac II cx's/ci's C(?) JPL 7 robots Suns to 6811 RCCL, ALFA McGill U Mobile robot Sparcs, mc68hc11, PC GNU, X, Small-C C, C++ MIT 20 robots Mac II & IIsi, HC6811 Behavior Language Polly VME, 6811, Mac Senselisp(Scheme) MITRE Denning MRV-1 MacQuadra, uExplorer Lisp, REX/GAPPS, C, C++ NRC of Canada EAVE Mac II's, 68020's C, HARMONY OS, MacAPP (Cybermotion) NC State Mobile robot VME 68020 & 68040, OS/9, P/NET Mac Purdue U. PETER Sun4, 68030 C, VxWorks (Cybermotion) Stanford Landmark based Mac IIci C, LISP Navigation (Nomadic) Swiss FIT Mobile robot Mac MacMETH, Modula-2 U of Central a) 6-leg walker Commodore 64 SuperC, C b) 6-leg walker Amiga 500 C U of Edinburgh a) ALDER 8052, SUN, PC Basic (Fischertecknik) b) CAIRNGORM 68000, SUN C (Fischertecknik) U of Mass., Denning DECstation 5000, C, LISP Amherst Sparcstation U of New Underwater Sparcstation, VxWorks, C(?) Hampshire robots CMOS VME boards U Wash. Denning HP 9000 series 300's, Gensym G2, OS/9 68000 LLAMA (Forth), Lisp, C VTT (Technical Akseli HP-1100, 386 MS-DOS, LynxOS (soon) Research Center C of Finland) _____________________________________________________________________________ +++What is the miniboard? The miniboard is an outgrowth of the MIT 6.270 robot course and design project. It is a small and inexpensive design for a controller board based on the ubiquitous (yet hard to find) 68HC11 micro-controller. There is now a mailing list for discussing the board. The purpose of the mailing list is to discuss robot controller boards, and robot control in general. In particular, the list will be used to support the Miniboard 2.0 and 6.270 board design by Fred Martin and Randy Sargent of MIT. However, any and all traffic related to robot controllers is welcome. Administrative address: robot-board-request@oberon.com Mailing list address: robot-board@oberon.com Maintainer: Please DO NOT send administrative things to the main mailing list address, as then everyone will get annoyed. _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Books: The readership of this group ranges from the naive user to experienced robot designers and users. Accordingly, this list covers the gamut as well. The Robot Builder's Bonanza: 99 Inexpensive Robotics Projects Gordon McComb TAB Books Interfacing Test Circuits With Single-Board Computers Robert H. Luetzow TAB Books Build Your Own Universal Computer Interface Bruce Chubb TAB Books Robots Peter Marsh Crescent (Crown) Publishers, NY 1985 Marsh edited the volume and the book is made up of several contributions from robotics researchers. A very well illustrated book that covers the general topic of robots. Excellent source materials and graphics. Microprocessor Based Robotics Mark J. Robillard Howard Sams & Co. 1983 Advanced Robot Systems Mark J. Robillard Howard Sams & Co. 1984 The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide Fred Martin Server: kame.media.mit.edu (18.85.0.45) File : ~ftp/pub/6270/docs/README This directory contains "The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide", the course notes to the 1992 MIT LEGO Robot Design Competition. Hardcopy also available for $15 from: E&L Memo Requests MIT Media Laboratory 20 Ames Street Room E15-309 Cambridge, MA 02139 USA Check made out to 'MIT Epistemology and Learning' Contact: Fred Martin at fredm@media-lab.media.mit.edu Minimalist Mobile Robotics Jonathan H Connel ISBN 0-12-185230-X Brooks subsumption architecture robots. Shows complex behaviors are possible with little of the massive architectures done in other programs. Machines That Walk Shin-Min Song and Kenneth J Waldron ISBN 0-262-19274-8 Like it says: legged locomotion. Focus is on the OSU Adaptive Suspension Vehicle. _____________________________________________________________________________ +++Acknowledgements: Thanks to those who responded with updates, new material, corrections, suggestions etc. Some of the names are indirect; that is, they replied to queries on the newsgroup: Hans Moravec, Maki Habib, Ken Goldberg, David Stanton, John Nagle, Sean Graves, Sjur Vestli, Mark Yim, Rich Wallace Dan Hudson, Sanjiv Singh, Matt Stein, Dave Stewart, Ed Cheung, Ron Fearing, Klaus Biggers, Lisa Rendleman, Nobuhiko Mukai, Paul Sharkey, Fred Martin, Willie Lim, Allen Brown. -- aka: Kevin Dowling Carnegie Mellon University tel: (412) 268-8830 The Robotics Institute adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213 -- aka: Kevin Dowling Carnegie Mellon University tel: (412) 268-8830 The Robotics Institute adr: nivek@ri.cmu.edu Pittsburgh, PA 15213