Introduction to RobWork — RobWork 23.9.11 documentation (original) (raw)

RobWork

Note

We are currently working a new documentation for RobWork based on Sphinx (this page). The old doxygen based documentation can still be found here . Doxygen will continue to be used as a reference for the C++ API, while overall documentation and tutorials will be migrated.

RobWork is a collection of C++ libraries for simulation and control of robot systems. RobWork is used for research and education as well as for practical robot applications. Features of the library include:

• Kinematic modeling of various types of industrial manipulators, serial-, tree-, and parallel structures.
• General path-planning, path optimization, collision detection and inverse kinematics algorithms.
• Both kinematic and dynamic simulation of manipulators, controllers and sensor.
• Plugins for grasp simulation of suction cups, parallel- and dexterous grippers.
• Simple and extendible GUI and plugin system for integrating user algorithms and visualizations.
• A script interface based on SWIG which extends RobWork to multiple script languages such as Python, Lua & Java.

Besides the core part, RobWork has a number of add-ons including

• RobWorkStudio which provides a graphical user interface.
• RobWorkSim which is for dynamic simulations.
• RobWorkHardware which is a collection of hardware drivers that connect into RobWork.

Target audience of RobWork is:

• Researchers who needs a common framework for experimental robotics
• Students who wants to experiment with concepts of robotics
• Implementers of robot applications

RobWork is developed by SDU Robotics at the University of Southern Denmark . The project was started in 2006 by Ph.D. and master students students at the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller Institute. The focus is on is on cognitive and applied robotics. This includes fields such as industrial robots, robot control, mathematical modelling and simulation, welfare robotics, and surgical robotics.

Introduction to the documentation

This documentation page includes tutorials on how to compile, install and use RobWork:

• Compilation & Installation guides you through setting up RobWork on Ubuntu, CentOS and Windows.
• Manual provides tutorials on basic usage of RobWork and RobWorkStudio. New users should start with these tutorials.
• tutorials provides tutorials on more advanced topics.
• File Formats is a reference for the XML format used to describe scenes in RobWork.
• Interfaces gives details about developing in different languages, such as C++, Python, Java & Lua.
• Contributing gives information about coding standards and the procedure for contributing code to the RobWork project.
• Device & Scene Collection shows the device and scene models available in RobWorkData.
• API Reference provides a reference for the four supported languages: C++, Python, Java & Lua.
• Developers is an overview of the main developers of RobWork.
• Publications gives an overview on publications that are based on RobWork.
• License & Dependencies gives an overview of licenses used by RobWork and all of RobWorks dependencies.