simulated arm/gripper

I've written a simulation of a 6-DOF arm/gripper that's working.  I have
two questions:

  (1) When all of the joint angles in the multibody are zero, the arm is
      pointing down.  I'd like to be able to rotate the arm so that when
      all of the joint angles are zero it's pointing in an arbitrary
      direction.  I've experimented with various rotate methods on the
      multibody and its joints, but either get no effect or erratic
      behavior.  Does anyone know how to do this?

  (2) Does anyone have any advice on how to parameterize the simulation to
      give the gripper, which just opens and closes, the best chance of
      getting a good grip on objects in the simulated world.  I've set
      friction on the gripper and objects to be high.  I've also played
      around with the coefficient of restitution (set-e).  Are there are
      things I can/should do?

Thanks.

  - tim

---------------------------------------
Tim Oates, Assistant Professor
Department of CS and EE
University of Maryland Baltimore County
(410) 455-3082
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~oates


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