Robotics

Manipulators, humanoid robots, and drones

Simscape™ Multibody™ provides tools for designing, simulating, and testing robotic systems, such as manipulators, humanoid robots, and drones.

Topics

Perform Forward and Inverse Kinematics on a Five-Bar Robot
This example shows how to use the KinematicsSolver object to perform forward kinematics (FK) and inverse kinematics (IK) on a five-bar robotic mechanism.

Featured Examples

Cable Robot

Models a cable robot. The robot comprises 8 independent belt-cable circuits which control the 6 degrees-of-freedom of the mover. A ball is dropped from a fixed height down the center axis of the mechanism. The mover initially starts directly below the ball and the contact is modeled between the mover and the ball such that the ball bounces elastically when striking the mover. The objective of the mover is to perform increasingly complex maneuvers between successive bounces of the ball. The mover is motion actuated from which the necessary cable, pulley, and motor spool kinematics are computed.

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Cartesian 3-D Printer

Models a Cartesian 3-D printer. The model allows you to specify the rotational motion of the motor on each axis to define a printing path. In this example, the printing head moves along the edges of two letters, S and M, using the predefined rotational motions.

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Computing Actuator Torques Using Inverse Dynamics

Illustrates the use of motion actuation to determine the actuator torques needed for the robot to achieve a given welding task. The system consists of a seven degree of freedom robot carrying a welding torch. The tip of the torch needs to trace the joints being welded. In this example the tip of the torch is made to trace (using motion actuation) a plus sign, a circle and a star sign on the workpiece. The torch is lifted off the workpiece when transitioning between the different shapes. The motion of the welding torch is specified and the actuator torques required at the various joints of the robot to achieve this motion is computed.

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Creating a Mobile Robot Using a MATLAB App

Demonstrates how a multibody system can be built using an interactive MATLAB® app. In this example an application for exploring the design space of a multibody system is shown. The system here is a mobile manipulator with four omni-directional wheels.

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Creating a Robotic Gripper Multibody in MATLAB

Constructs a robotic gripper multibody in MATLAB®. It demonstrates how various classes under simscape.multibody.* package can be used to build a hierarchical multibody system.

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Humanoid Robot

Has been imported from a URDF file using the smimport command. The URDF file "Humanoid.urdf" and the STEP files that visualize the robot parts were used to create this example. Motion actuation of the joints was manually added to the imported model to make the robot perform interesting movements.

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Package Delivery Quadcopter

Models a package delivery quadcopter. The quadcopter takes off from the launchpad and delivers the package to the drop-off location while following a desired trajectory.

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Pick and Place Robot Using Forward and Inverse Kinematics

Model a delta robot performing a pick and place task.

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Stewart Platform

A Stewart platform manipulator that can track a parameterized reference trajectory. The shape, size, and kinematics of the manipulator are highly configurable.

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3-Roll Robotic Wrist Mechanism

Models a 3-Roll robotic wrist mechanism based on the Cincinnati-Milacron 3-roll wrist mechanism. The mechanism uses three bevel gear pairs to rotate the tool about 3 independent axes. The tip of the tool moves along the surface of a sphere and can be rotated about an axis that passes through the center of that sphere (drilling action). In this example, precomputed torques are applied to the three drive shafts to achieve a certain trajectory (on the surface of the sphere) of the tool tip. Drilling is performed at different points along the trajectory.

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Train Humanoid Walker

Model a humanoid robot using Simscape Multibody™ and train it using either a genetic algorithm (which requires a Global Optimization Toolbox license) or reinforcement learning (which requires Deep Learning Toolbox™ and Reinforcement Learning Toolbox™ licenses).

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