Robot arm
A robot arm or robotic arm can be classified as articulated and not articulated. It’s more autonomous than a simple mechanic arm and can be used to lift small parts with high precision and velocity. It’s generally used in tasks such as: welding, painting, assembling, packaging, storage, product inspection and test and even in spacecrafts as can be seen below:
OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a standard specification that defines an API (Application Program Interface) that is multi-language and multi-platform and that enables the codification of applications that output computerized graphics in 2D and 3D.
Computer graphics paper
I and a dear brother in faith of mine called Wellington Magalhães Leite wrote a paper titled: Construction and Simulation of a Robot Arm with OpenGL
We used the Tao Framework C# biding to OpenGL during the construction of the robot arm.
See one of the screenshots of our robot arm:
See the paper's abstract below:
The importance of projects related to the field of Computer Graphics in simulations has been growing a lot during the last years. Therefore it brings to life the necessity of mastering the concepts and techniques inherent to the process of elaboration, construction and simulation of a given graphical project.
The OpenGPL API specification tries to help us when we are programming the graphical details of a given project. In this article we’re showing the necessary steps and routines to the proper codification and simulation of a robotic arm in 3D, which is the most employed robot in the manufacturing industry and in areas that require a high precision rate.
With a simulation (virtual) model, we can have a closer vision of the object of study in contrast with reality, what make us capable of foreseeing how a determined object will look like and how it will behave after its proper construction in the physical world.
Keywords: robot arm, OpenGL, 3D simulation, computer graphics
You can get a PDF copy of the article at:
https://github.com/leniel/leniel.net/blob/master/Uploads/ConstructionSimulationRobotArmOpenGL.pdf
Visual Studio C# Windows Application
You can get the Microsoft Visual Studio Project and the executables at:
https://github.com/leniel/leniel.net/blob/master/Uploads/RobotArmOpenGLCSharp.zip
