The desired task, in this case spray painting a car door,
is specified as required positions/orientation and/or velocities
for the tool, independent of the actor used to perform the
task.
The articulated "actor", in this case a robot, is defined by the geometry
of each rigid body "link" relative to its own coordinate
frame.
The desired task, in this case spray painting a car door,
is specified as required positions/orientation and/or velocities
for the tool, independent of the actor used to perform the
task.
The task constraints are used to automatically compute a
path for the tool. This tool path is then used to automatically
compute a set of robot joint velocities that guarantees
that the tool will follow the required path.
Common sense requirements for successfully completing the
task, e.g. collision avoidance, are built into the low-level
inverse kinematics techniques that generate the desired
robot joint velocities.
For a more complete description of the technique used to create this simulation, see:
A. A. Maciejewski and C. A. Klein, ``SAM: Animation software for simulating articulated motion,'' Computers and Graphics: An International Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 383-391, 1985.