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Archive-name: robotics-faq/part2
Last-modified: 10/26/92


This is part 2 of 2 of the comp.robotics Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list.
This FAQ addresses commonly asked questions relating to robotics.

Part 2
    Sensors
    Suppliers and sources for Parts
    Hero Robots
    Puma Manipulators
    Simulators
    Real-Time Operating Systems
    Books

    Acknowledgements

Changes, additions, comments, suggestions and questions to:
    [e-mail]
aka:     Kevin Dowling
         Robotics Institute
    Carnegie Mellon University
    Pittsburgh, PA 15213

___________________________________________________________________________
Sensors:
    This list covers only the most frequently requested types of
robot sensors. These include point-range sensors, cameras, and
acoustic devices. See Sensors magazine directory for a large and
comprehensive list.

Accelerometers:
    These are devices for measuring the rate of change in velocity
and can provide estimations of distance or be used to detect high
forces.
Lucas NovaSensor
1055 Mission Court
Fremont, CA 94539
[phone]
Lucas makes a 1"x1"x0.5" accelerometer for about $200. Good noise
immunity but fragile.

Cameras:
    There are a large number of cameras on the market and many
consumer products such as the smaller camcorders are inexpensive and
suitable for imaging applications. I'll try to list some different and
unusual ones here.
    Sony has a beautiful small color CCD, the XC-999/999P.
It is the size of a microphone. 768Hx493V. 999 is NTSC and the 999P
is the PAL format.

CIDTech has some really nice ones with CID instead of CCD, especialy
good for machine vision, no blooming, fast image grabbing.

Gyros:
    Used for measuring orientation.

KVH Industries
110 Enterprise Center
Middletown, RI 02840
[phone]
Nice units that provide heading data. About $1K w/ RS232 adapter.

Laser rangefinders:
    There are a variety of laser rangefinding devices that have
been built. The 3D devices are still large, power hungry and heavy but
give very nice images suitable for fast map building and navigtion
work. Expect to pay over $80K for these time of flight devices. Most
AM Lidars measure phase shift between outgoing and reflected beams.
A mirror system rasters the beam forming a video-camera-like image.
Some devices supply the reflectance image as well as range which
is nice for corresponding the two. Comprehensive references include:

P. Besl, ``Active, Optical Range Imaging Sensors'', Machine Vision and
Applications, v. 1, p. 127-152, 1988.

A longer version of Besl's paper appears in ``Advances in Machine Vision:
Architectures and Applications'', J. Sanz (ed.), Springer-Verlag, 1988.

Other good surveys are Ray Jarvis' article in IEEE TPAMI v5n2
and Nitzan's article in PAMI v10n2.

A number of laboratory works have also demonstrated FM or chirp systems
which can be highly accurate (e.g. elevation maps of coins are one
demonstration of these) but these are very specialized and I don`t
know of commercial devices currently.

  ERIM (Environmental Research Institute of Michigan)
    ERIM has built a number of custom AM laser rangefinders
including those used in the ALV (Autonomous Land Vehicle) program. CMU and
Martin Marietta have both used this systems in extensive work.
Basic system was a 128x64 2fps 20m (ambiguity interval) system.

  Odetics

  Perceptron
A spin-off of ERIM, Perceptron has also built a number of AM laser
rangefinders. CMU and Caterpillar have used these for map building and
obstacle avoidance work in rough terrain navigation. 128x128, 2fps,
programmable tilt on nodding mirror. About $90K

  Schwarz Electro-Optics
Schwarz makes some very nice point range laser ranging devices. These
devices are slightly bigger than a soda can. About $6K. CMU experience
for use in simulated unmanned air vehicle platform worked well.

Force and Torque Sensors:

California Cybernetics
10322 Sherman Grove
Sunland, CA 91040
[phone]
[phone] (fax)
6 dof F-T devices.

Sonar sensors:
    Acoustic time-of-flight devices have been around for awhile
now. The ubiquitous Polaroid device is cheap and easily integrated
and has has found wide use in robotic devices. Other companies have
developed nice complete turnkey sonar devices though and Polaroid
is no longer the only choice.

Polaroid
(617)-577-4681 or write at
119 Windsor St,
Cambridge, MA 02139

Polariod Ultrasonic Components Group offers two ultrasonic ranging kits:
Specs are:
    Distance range: 0.26 to 10.7 meters
    Resolution: Nominal +- 3mm to 3m, +-1% over entire range
    Sonar acceptance angle: approx. 20 degrees
    Power Requirement: 6VDC, 2.5 Amps (1 mS pulse), 150mA quiescent
    Weight: Transducer, 8.2gm
            Ranging module, 18.4 gm
Designer's Kit:
    1 transducer, 1 ranging module, electronics display
    accurate to 1/10th meter. Cost is $169
OEM kit:
    2 transducers, 2 ranging modules. Cost is $99.

  Siemans - nice complete sensor package, 5 degree cone angle
  Massa - components

Position Sensing Devices:
Noncontact, cabled measurement of 6DOF's. Virtual reality applications.

Polhemus Inc
[phone]
[phone] (fax)
Burlington, VT
3Space, Isotrak, FasTrak:
Electromagnetic devices for sensing xyz and rotations remotely. Limited
to 1m or so radius. Sensitive to metallic objects in vicinity. Approx $3k

Ascension Technology
[phone]
[phone]
The Bird.

Video systems
Selspot - used for biomechanical applications.

Pan/Tilt devices:
A common robotic need. For 10 years or more I have heard the phrase
"If only someone made a nice/small/inexpensive/computer-interfaced
pan-tilt mechanism." Most pan-tilts sold today by companies such as
Pelco and Vicon are for CCTV applications for continuous scanning
or remote operation. At most these will have pots for feedback.
A number of undersea companies make pan-tilt devices as well.

    Remote Ocean Systems
    5111-L Santa Fe Street
    San Diego, CA 92109
    [phone]
    Underwater P/T systems, expensive $6K but very nicely packaged

    RSI Research
    Sidney, BC
    [phone]
    Underwater pan-tilts

    Photosea
    6377 Nancy Ridge Drive
    San Diego, CA 92121
    [phone]
    underwater pan-tilts including Cobra, very small design.

    Telemetrics
    Hawthorne, NJ
    [phone]
    Computer controlled P/T devices - fairly large though.

    Directed Perception
    1451 Capuchino Avenue,
    Burlingame, CA 94010
    [phone]
    Computer controlled pan-tilt unit Model PTU-33-17.5
    Weighs 1kg and can support ~1.5kg camera payload.
    Very nice specs: 200 deg/sec slew, 3-4arc-min accuracy,
    RS-232 interface, About $1200.

____________________________________________________________________________
Robot parts: Suppliers of useful mechanical and electrical components.

Allied Devices
standard precision mechanical components
2365 Milburn Avenue,
PO Box 502
Bladwin, NY 11510
[phone]
[phone] (fax)

Winifred Berg

C&H Sales
Pasadena, CA
[phone]
[phone]
Surplus parts. Motors etc.

Small Parts Inc.
6891 NE Third Ave
PO Box 381966
Miami, FL 33238-1966
[phone]
fax [phone]
Lots of neat small supplies including: materials, metal stock, fasteners,
tools etc.

Servo Systems
115 Main Road
PO Box 97
Montville, NJ 07045-9299
[phone]
fax [phone]
Surplus pieces and prices, motors, actuators, geardrives, controllers,
robots, encoders, transducers, amplifiers.

Herbach and Rademan
401 E. Erie Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19134
[phone]
Lots of surplus stuff including AC and DC motors.

Nordex
50 Newton Road
Danbury, CT 06810-6216
Gears, cams, universals etc.

Seitz
Box 1398
Torrington, CT 06790
[phone]
drive components, gears etc.

Stock Drive Products
2101 Jericho Turnpike
Bobx 5416
New Hyde Park, NY 11042-5416
[phone]
[phone] (fax)
Great set of handbooks of thousands of components.

Edmund Scientific
101 E. Gloucester Pike
Barrington, NJ 08007-1380
[phone] order
[phone] customer service
Lots of optics, science and educational items. A little high priced, but
nice selection.

PIC Design
PO Box 1004
Benson Road
Middlebury, CT 06762-1004
[phone] (except CT)
[phone]
Bearings, clutches, brakes, couplings, tools, belts, pulleys, gears etc.

Any technical library should have catalogs from the larger
distributors. These might include McMaster-Carr, Grainger, Allied,
Newark, etc.


____________________________________________________________________________
Hero robots:

Heros are no longer being made but Heath still offers some replacement
parts.  They had about 8 years of sales: 4,000 Hero Jr's, 3,000 Hero
2000's, 14,000 assembled Hero 1's. Ones with less capability didn't do
as well but higher priced ones did ok.

Heathkit
Benton Harbor, MI
[phone] order line
tech line [phone]
_____________________________________________________________________________
Puma manipulators:

Pumas are probably the most common robot in university laboratories
and one of the most common assembly robots. Designed by Vic
Schienman many years ago it was produced for many years by Unimation
(later purchased by Westinghouse and sold at a loss later to Staubli,
a Swiss company) Found in many university labs as well.

PUMA singularities:

The PUMA has three singularities: the ``alignment'' singularity
(wrist is as close to the axis of joint 1 as it can get),
the ``elbow'' singularity (elbow is fully extended or folded
up; the latter is not possible because of joint limits), and
the wrist singularity (the axes of joints 4 and 6 are aligned).

The angles corresponding to these depend on the DH parameter
assignment.  For the PUMA, the definitions given in [1] are perhaps
the most commonly used Using these, and letting A2, A3, D3, and D4
denote the translational DH offsets, the singularities occur when the
following are true:

Alignment:    D4*sin(ang2+ang3) + A2*cos(ang2) - A3*cos(ang2+ang3) == 0

Elbow:        sin(ang3 - atan2(A3,D4)) == 0

Wrist:        sin(ang5) == 0

Typical offset values for the PUMA 560 are

A2 =  431.80
D3 =  149.09
A3 =  20.32
D4 =  433.070

[information provided by John Lloyd <[e-mail]>]

Useful references:

[1] Richard Paul, Brian Shimano, and Gordon Mayer, ``Kinematic Control
    Equations for Simple Manipulators''. IEEE Transactions on Systems,
    Man, and Cybernetics, Vol SMC-11, No. 6, June 1981.

[2] B Armstrong, O Khatib, and J. Burdick
    The Explicit Dynamic Model and Inertial Parameters of the PUMA 560 Arm
    Proceedings IEEE Int. Conference on Robotics and Automation, April 1986
    San Francisco, CA pp510-518
_____________________________________________________________________________
Simulators:

CADSI
PO Box 203
Oakdale, IA 52319
[phone]
DADS - robot dynamics package

Deneb Robotics, Inc.
3285 Lapeer Road West
PO Box 214687
[phone]
Product:    IGRIP
Platforms:    SPARCs, (SGI's?)
Cost:        US$50-$60,000.
Allows offline programming, dynamics capability etc.

Mechanical Dynamics Inc.
2301 Commonwealth Blvd
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
[phone]
ADAMS dynamics package

Silma/Cimstation
1601 Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road
Cupertino, California  95014
[phone]
Product:    CimStation
Platforms:    SGI-4D, SUN SparcStation, Apollo, Intergraph,
        Computervision, HP, IBM Risc6000 and DEC.
Cost:        Base system around $55K (commercial license)
        They also have a University Partnership
        Program to enable universities to purchase CimStation
        for around $20K US and $25K International.

Provides: Basic CAD Tools: 2D and 3D solid & wireframe, IGES interface,
Robot Modelling: generate the required governing
equations (iterative or closed form)
automatically for "many" classes of robots
Path Generation
Kinematic Simulation with Collision Detection
Dynamic Simulation (CimStation only at this point)
I/O Operations

John Craig of "Introduction to Robotics" fame is head of Silma's R&D.
Silma has a programming environment called SIL complete with its own
PASCAL-like iterative language with graphics and robotics extensions.
CimStation is built out of this language.  This allows you to add your
own functionality. E.g. your own path planner. You can also write
C-code, compile it, and add it to the system.

Comutek
1223 Peoples Avenue
Troy, NY  12180
ph# 518 276 2817
fax# [phone]
contact:  Vinay Joshi
Products: Work-Out
Cost: Around $25000.

Robot Simulations/Workspace
[From: "Newsletter of the Australian Robot Association - Jan 1991]
``"Vision in Design" of Punchbowl N.S.W. announces the Australian
availability of version 2.0 of the "Workspace" robot-simulation software
developed by "Robot Simulations" in the U.K.  The software, which runs on
an IBM-compatible personal computer, is claimed to provide features similar
to those available on much more expensive programs that require workstation
hardware.  Version 2.0 is said to be faster than the initial version and to
offer such capabilities as automatic collision detection, 3D solid shaded
colour graphics real-time display of simulations, and an expanded library
of inverse kinematics algorithms for standard robots.  Up to nine robots
and associated machinery may be simulated simultaneously.  Custom-designed
robots having up to nine links can be simulated.''

Technomatix/Robcad
[address?]

GMF Robotics
2000 S. Adams Road
Auburn Hills, MI  48057
ph# 313 377 7000
Products: OLPW-200
Platforms: ?
Cost: ?

Auto Simulations, Inc.
655 Medical Drive
Bountiful, UT  84010
ph# 801 298 1398
telex 801 298 8186
contact:  Teresa Francis, ext 330
Products: AutoMod II
Platforms: ?
Cost: ?
_____________________________________________________________________________
Real-Time Operating Systems

This is an abridged list of Dave Stewart's FAQ on RTOS'. See
comp.real-time and news.answers for that FAQ.

Below is a list of both commercial and research Real-Time Operating
Systems (RTOS) which are being used around the world for implementing
robotic systems.  Only the names and addresses of the distributors are
included.  Since the available features of each are constantly
changing, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are greatly a
matter of opinion and target application, no such descriptions are
given.

Commercial RTOS:

    * iRMX III
        Runs on Intel 80X86-based computers
    U.S.A.:
        Intel Corporation
        3065 Bowers Avenue
        Santa Clara, California 95051
        tel [phone]
    * LynxOS
        Runs on wide variety of platforms, including Motorola,
        Intel, Sun, and Hewlett Packard.

        Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc
        16780 Lark
        Los Gatos, CA 95030
        tel [phone]
        fax [phone]

    * OS-9
        Runs on Motorola MC680X0-based single board computers.

        Microware System Corporation
        1900 N.W. 114th St.
        Des Moines, Iowa 50322
        tel [phone]
    * pSOS+
        Runs on a variety of Motorola 680X0 and 88100, and
        Intel 80386 computers.  Requires a host workstation or
        personal computer if pASSPORT+ real-time programming
        environment is to be used.

        Software Components Group, Inc.
        1731 Technology Drive
        San Jose, CA  95110
        tel [phone]
        fax [phone]

    *VRTX
        Runs on a wide variety of processors, including Motorola 680X0,
        Intel 80X86 and 80960, National Semiconductor series 3200.

        Ready Systems
        470 Potrero Avenue
        P.O.Box 60217
        Sunnyvale, CA 94086
        [phone]
        fax [phone]

    * VxWorks
        Runs on a wide variety of MC680X0 and SPARC-based single
        board computers. Requires a workstation for program developments

        Wind River Systems Inc.
        1000 Atlantic Avenue
        Alameda, CA 94501
        [phone]
        fax [phone]

Research RTOS that are distributed:

    * Chimera II
        Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers.
        Requires a Sun workstation for program development
    U.S.A.:
        Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
        Carnegie Mellon University
        5000 Forbes Avenue
        Pittsburgh, PA 15213
        ATTN: David B. Stewart
        tel [phone]
        fax [phone]
        email: [e-mail]

    * Harmony
        Runs on MC680X0-based single board computers
    Canada:
        Division of Electrical Engineering
        National Research Council of Canada
        Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
        K1A 0R6
        ref: NRCC Tech Report No. 30081

Robot Control C Library (RCCL)
A robot programming environment embedded in C/UNIX. A graphics
simulator is provided which supports the PUMA, Stanford, and ``Elbow''
manipulators. The system can be compiled on SGIs (so the Indigo should
be fine), and the graphics runs under either X or GL.
You can get the system from RCIM for a small fee to cover copying and
shipping. Send me some mail if you are interested.
John Lloyd            Research Center for Intelligent Machines
[e-mail]   McGill University, Montreal
[phone]            Fax: [phone]

_____________________________________________________________________________

Books:

The readership of this group ranges from the naive user to experienced
robot designers and users. Accordingly, this list covers the gamut as well.

The Robot Builder's Bonanza: 99 Inexpensive Robotics Projects
Gordon McComb
TAB Books

Interfacing Test Circuits With Single-Board Computers
Robert H. Luetzow
TAB Books

Build Your Own Universal Computer Interface
Bruce Chubb
TAB Books

Robots
Peter Marsh
Marsh edited the volume and the book is made up of several
contributions from robotics researchers.
[ok,ok I'm in here too, but it's a very well illustrated book that
covers the general topic of robots. Excellent source materials and
graphics.]
Crescent (Crown) Publishers, NY 1985

Microprocessor Based Robotics
Mark J. Robillard
Howard Sams & Co. 1983

Advanced Robot Systems
Mark J. Robillard
Howard Sams & Co. 1984

The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide
Fred Martin
  Server: kame.media.mit.edu (18.85.0.45)
  File  : ~ftp/pub/fredm/README
  This directory contains "The 6.270 Robot Builder's Guide", the
  course notes to the 1992 MIT LEGO Robot Design Competition.
  Contact: Fred Martin at [e-mail]

_____________________________________________________________________________
Acknowledgements:
[People who responded directly to me or the net]

Hans Moravec, Maki Habib, Ken Goldberg, David Stanton,
John Nagle, Sean Graves, Sjur Vestli, Mark Yim, Rich Wallace
Dan Hudson, Sanjiv Singh, Matt Stein, Dave Stewart, Ed Cheung, Ron
Fearing, Klaus Biggers, Lisa Rendleman, Nobuhiko Mukai
--