Effective Simulation and Control Approaches for Alleviating the Access to High-Cost Manipulators

A problem that becomes increasingly obvious over time derives from purchasing and working with large scale, industrial type of manipulators. Primarily affected are higher level educational institutions, where manipulators are likely to be exposed to student projects that demand diversity in control strategies and various controlling software and hardware methods. These robots are likely to become victims of abusive usage and, in addition, the institutions need to offer some of the highest standards of safety for the students. Most of the robots are also expensive and buying the most appropriate robot(s) for an institution is challenging. In addition, the majority of the robots do not come with pertinent documentation and software that can give satisfactory information before the time of purchase, while third party software simulation packages are not focused on covering specific robot models and manufacturers. This paper presents a software simulation and control package applied on a specific manipulator that is crucial in solving problems such as the above mentioned ones. In addition, the package offers a variety of implementation examples that can be directly derived from the simulation package.