CoppeliaSim Introduction - Revision history

Lynch: /* Scene 8: CSV youBot End-Effector Animation */

2025-09-24T11:13:02Z

Scene 8: CSV youBot End-Effector Animation

Lynch at 13:11, 17 September 2025

2025-09-17T13:11:19Z

Lynch: /* Scene 8: CSV youBot End-Effector Animation */

2024-12-10T20:28:41Z

Scene 8: CSV youBot End-Effector Animation

Lynch: /* Scene 7: CSV Animation MTB */

2024-12-10T20:28:16Z

Scene 7: CSV Animation MTB

Lynch: /* Scene 6: CSV Mobile Manipulation youBot */

2024-12-10T20:27:51Z

Scene 6: CSV Mobile Manipulation youBot

Lynch: /* Scene 5: CSV Motion Planning Kilobot */

2024-12-10T20:27:21Z

Scene 5: CSV Motion Planning Kilobot

Lynch: /* Scene 4: CSV Animation youBot */

2024-12-10T20:27:00Z

Scene 4: CSV Animation youBot

Lynch: /* Scene 3: Interactive youBot */

2024-12-10T20:26:46Z

Scene 3: Interactive youBot

Lynch: /* Scene 2: CSV Animation UR5 */

2024-12-10T20:26:31Z

Scene 2: CSV Animation UR5

Lynch: /* Scene 1: Interactive UR5 */

2024-12-10T20:26:18Z

Scene 1: Interactive UR5

@@ Line 172: / Line 172: @@
 [[image:capstone-gripper.png|right|x150px]]
-[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page''' has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project (specifically Milestone 2) using this scene.
+[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page''']] has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project (specifically Milestone 2) using this scene.
 This scene is used in [[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|Milestone 2 of the capstone mobile manipulation project]].  It animates the motion of the gripper of the youBot only (the rest of the youBot is not shown), and this scene is used to validate the planned motion of the gripper.  Each line of the csv file has 13 comma-separated values:  12 from the top three rows of the transformation matrix <math>T_{se}</math> representing the configuration of the end-effector frame {e} relative to the space frame {s}, and 1 representing the gripper state (0 = open, 1 = closed).  In other words, one line of the csv file is

@@ Line 212: / Line 212: @@
 == Useful Resources ==
-* [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/resources.html CoppeliaSim User Manual and Other Resources]
+* [https://manual.coppeliarobotics.com/ CoppeliaSim User Manual]
-* [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/videos.html CoppeliaSim Videos Page]
 * [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/helpFiles/en/tutorials.htm CoppeliaSim Tutorial Series]
-* [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/features.html Overview of CoppeliaSim Features]
 * [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/helpFiles/en/apiOverview.htm CoppeliaSim API Documentation] These are all functions that can either be called directly from a custom C/C++ plugin or through a Lua embedded script.
 * [http://www.coppeliarobotics.com/helpFiles/en/remoteApiOverview.htm Remote API Documentation] The Remote API is how CoppeliaSim enables scripts and programs written in other languages (MATLAB, Java, Python, etc.) to interact with a CoppeliaSim simulation.

@@ Line 172: / Line 172: @@
 [[image:capstone-gripper.png|right|x150px]]
+[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page''' has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project (specifically Milestone 2) using this scene.
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
-[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project (specifically Milestone 2) using this scene.''']]
 This scene is used in [[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|Milestone 2 of the capstone mobile manipulation project]].  It animates the motion of the gripper of the youBot only (the rest of the youBot is not shown), and this scene is used to validate the planned motion of the gripper.  Each line of the csv file has 13 comma-separated values:  12 from the top three rows of the transformation matrix <math>T_{se}</math> representing the configuration of the end-effector frame {e} relative to the space frame {s}, and 1 representing the gripper state (0 = open, 1 = closed).  In other words, one line of the csv file is

@@ Line 156: / Line 156: @@
 [[image:MTB-img.png|right|x150px]]
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
 This scene simulates a RRPR robot. It animates a csv file containing a trajectory of joint angles. Each column of the csv file is the joint angle/length through time for one of the joints (in the order of RRPR). A single row of the csv file represents a complete configuration of the robot at a particular time. The prismatic joint (P) has the joint limit range [0, 0.2]. The assumed time step between rows is equal to the time step that CoppeliaSim uses for simulation; the default is 0.05 seconds.

@@ Line 133: / Line 133: @@
 [[image:youbot-capstone.png|right|x150px]]
+[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page''']] has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project using this scene, as well as more details regarding the operation of the physics engines, the kinematics of the youBot, properties of the end-effector (gripper), and properties of the cube.
-'''(This scene had minor updates in November 2019, to fix a problem on some Macs in loading csv files.)'''
-[[Mobile Manipulation Capstone|'''This page has a description of a capstone mobile manipulation project using this scene, as well as more details regarding the operation of the physics engines, the kinematics of the youBot, properties of the end-effector (gripper), and properties of the cube.''']]
 This scene has a youBot mobile manipulator and a cube.  The youBot is expected to pick up the cube and put it down at a goal location ("pick and place").  This scene animates a user-specified csv file specifying the motion of the youBot, much as in Scene 4, except now the gripper interacts dynamically with the cube.  Each row of the csv file has 13 variables:  3 for the chassis configuration (phi, x, y), 5 for the arm joint angles, 4 for the wheel angles (where the wheels are numbered as shown in Scene 4), and 1 for the gripper state (0 = open, 1 = closed).  Unlike previous csv visualization scenes where CoppeliaSim simply makes a movie of the configurations, and there is no notion of the simulated time between successive lines in the csv file, this CoppeliaSim scene is performing a dynamic simulation, so the time between each line is important to determine the dynamic behavior.  '''The simulated time between each line of the csv file is 0.01 seconds (10 milliseconds).'''

@@ Line 101: / Line 101: @@
 [[image:kilobot-img.png|right|x150px]]
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
 This scene allows you to visualize motion planning on an undirected graph using graph-search techniques such as A*.  To visualize the planned motion, we are using the [https://www.kilobotics.com/ kilobot] robot moving in a planar square environment of dimensions -0.5 <= x <= 0.5 and -0.5 <= y <= 0.5.  Obstacles are represented as cylinders, and the graph itself is illustrated as blue nodes with yellow edges.  The path that the kilobot actually follows is indicated by green edges, and the goal node is in red.  See the image to the right.

@@ Line 80: / Line 80: @@
 [[image:youbot-top-view.png|right|x150px]]
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
 This scene animates the motion of the youBot based on a csv file representing the trajectory of the robot.  Each row of the csv file represents a timestep and each column of the csv file is a configuration variable through time.  The csv file has either 12 or 13 columns.  Columns 1-3 represent the mobile base configuration variables, ordered as (phi, x, y), where phi is the angle of the base and (x, y) is the location of its center.  Columns 4-8 represent the five arm joint angles, joint 1 through joint 5.  Columns 9-12 represent the wheel angles, where wheel 1 is column 9 and wheel 4 is column 12, and the numbering of the wheels is shown in the figure on the right.  Column 13 is optional.  If it is present, then 0 means the gripper is open and 1 means the gripper is closed.  If there is no column 13, then the gripper is open by default.  All angles are specified in radians.

@@ Line 68: / Line 68: @@
 [[image:youbot-fig.png|right|x150px]]
-'''(Updated August 2018, to match the frame conventions used in the textbook and in Scene 4, animation of the youBot.)'''
 This scene helps you visualize a youBot mobile manipulator from KUKA. The KUKA youBot consists of a mecanum-wheel omnidirectional base and a 5R robot arm.  Move the mobile base of the robot and the joints of the robot using sliders, and inspect the SE(3) representation of the resulting end-effector coordinate frame.  All angles are represented in radians, and linear distances are represented in meters.  The following frames are illustrated:  the world frame {s}, a frame fixed to the center of the mobile chassis {b}, a frame fixed at the base of the robot arm {0}, and a frame fixed to the end-effector {e}.

@@ Line 55: / Line 55: @@
 === Scene 2:  CSV Animation UR5 ===
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
 This scene animates the motion of the UR5 robot based on a csv file representing the trajectory of the robot.  Each row of the csv file represents a timestep and each column of the csv file is the joint angle through time for one of the joints (first column is joint 1, last column is joint 6).

@@ Line 46: / Line 46: @@
 [[image:ur5-img.png|right|x150px]]
-'''(This scene had minor updates in August 2018.)'''
 This scene helps you visualize a [https://www.universal-robots.com/products/ur5-robot/ UR5 robot] from [https://www.universal-robots.com/ Universal Robots]. The model of the UR5 was created by importing a URDF from the ROS-Industrial [https://github.com/ros-industrial/universal_robot/tree/indigo-devel/ur_description/urdf ur5_description package]. The GUI in this scene features two tabs. One tab lets you drag sliders to modify the joint angles of each joint, and the other tab allows you to specify comma-separated angles for all 6 joints in an editable text box and ask for the SE(3) transformation from the base frame to the end-effector frame. The frames attached to the base and end-effector are persistently displayed (x-axis in red, y-axis in green, z-axis in blue). Note that all angles are specified in radians.