Rich Primerano's Course Project

The Project

One of the first things I'll work on for this class is developing a physics based model of the robotic snake using ADAMS. THe purpose of this is so that I may test several control algorithms, written in MATLAB, and tune their performance using the virtual device rather than a physical robot.

A solid model of the robot is already build in Pro/Engineer and a controller is being written in MATLAB. The initial controller will be a simple *[1] with each axis decoupled from the others. Although this is not the best approach, It sould be adiquate in the beginning while I work out some bugs. Later, this will likely be replaced with a state feedback controller. Initally, the controller will drive a simulated version of the snake build in a (still undetermined) physics based simulator.

Week 1

This week, I have familarizes myself with MSC/ADAMS, a program used for developing physics based models. This model could be integrated with a control algorithm so that the controller could be tuned.

Resources

The tutorials links below are useful for those interested in learning either of these software packages.

Pro/Engineer Tutorials http://www.staffs.ac.uk/~entdgc/WildfireDocs/tutorials.htm http://www.me.cmu.edu/academics/courses/NSF_Edu_Proj/Wildfire_short_course/tutorials.htm

ADAMS Tutorials http://support.mscsoftware.com/kb/results_kb.cfm?S_ID=1-KB8703