Re: Updated document on kin&dyn API...

On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, Pierangelo Masarati wrote:

[...]
> > In addition, many deformabilities in robotics can be quite well
> > described as "lumped". For example, a flexible robot joint. These
> > systems will be covered by the simple DAE approach, just be extending
> > the state space of the model.
> 
> We are starting a research on a space robot with very soft and long
> arms, with frequencies in the range of hertz; although all you said
> above is correct about mixing finite and infinite dimensional systems,
> I think we cannot simply use lumped systems to model this.  

I absolutely agree! But this kind of robots is not really what most of
the Orocos public would be working with :-) There is however a recent
trend in robotics (which you mention also) that _does_ require more
complex models: "service robots". These are robots that are supposed
to work toegether with humans in unstructured and unprotected
environments. Hence, they must be made "soft", hence they are flexible
as inifite-dimensional systems.

So, maybe the modelling and control of such "soft arms" could be the
topic of a smaller scale EU STREPS project? We have a starting PhD
student on this topic, who will be building an arm...

Herman
-- 
  K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://people.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 322480