Windows-based robot simulation tools

A new graphical simulation package, which is capable of interoperability with other extensive programs, is proposed. A built-in LISP interpreter based on COMMON LISP allows a user to model and manipulate the robot while the result is displayed on a three-dimension graphical display. Other programming languages that are compatible with the component object model (COM) interface can also be applied to the modeling and simulation. The simulation package provides many useful features such as collision detection, inverse kinematics, matrix transformation operations, and several graphical user interfaces. The simulation objects are built based on a triangle strip model to form primitive objects such as a box, cone, sphere, etc. These primitive objects are combined to construct the robot that may contain several serial or parallel links so that many possible types of robots can be modeled.