A rigid body dynamics and contacts simulator written in python.
Project description
Arboris is a rigid body dynamics and contacts simulator written in python.
Arboris includes a generic and easily extensible set of joints (singularity-free multi-dof joints, non-honolomic joints, etc.) which are used to model open rigid mechanisms with a minimal set of state variables.
The dynamics of these systems are computed in a form similar to the Boltzmann-Hamel equations.
Using time-stepping and a semi-implicit Euler integration scheme, a first-order approximation of the model is also computed. This allows for additional constraints such as contacts and kinematic loops to be solved using a Gauss-Seidel algorithm.
Arboris is mostly useful for robotic applications and human motion studies. The python language makes it particularly suited for fast-paced development (prototyping) and education.
Background
In 2005, Alain Micaelli, a researcher from CEA LIST, wrote a first version of the simulator in the matlab language. It was an implementation (and often an extension) of the algorithms described in [Park2005], [Murray1994] and [Liu2003]. He was later joined by Sébastien Barthélemy, from ISIR/UPMC, who reorganized the code to take advantage of the early object-oriented features of matlab. It eventually became clear that the language was ill-designed, and that a full rewrite was necessary. With the help of Joseph Salini, also from ISIR/UPMC, Arboris-python was born. The resulting framework is now quite similar to what is presented in [Duindam2006].
The matlab version of the simulator is now deprecated.
Richard M. Murray, Zexiang Li and S. Shankar Sastry, “A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation”, CRC Press, 1994.
Jonghoon Park, “Principle of Dynamical Balance for Multibody Systems”, Multibody System Dynamics, vol. 14, number 3-4, pp. 269-299, 2005.
T. Liu and M. Y. Wang, “Computation of three dimensional rigid body dynamics of multiple contacts using time-stepping and Gauss-Seidel method”, IEEE Transaction on Automation Science and Engineering, submitted, November 2003.
V. Duindam, “Port-Based Modelling and Control for Efficent Bipedal Walking Robots”, University of Twente, 2006.
