Abstract

The Kautham Project is a software tool developped at the Service and Industrial Robotics (SIR) group of the Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering (IOC) of the [Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya] ( http://www.upc.edu (UPC), for teaching and research in robot motion planning. The tool allows to cope with problems with one or more robots, being a generic robot defined as a kinematic tree with a mobile base, i.e. the tool can plan and simulate from simple two degrees of freedom free-flying robots to multi-robot scenarios with mobile manipulators equipped with anthropomorphic hands. The main core of planners is provided by the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL). Different basic planners can be flexibly used and parameterized, allowing students to gain insight into the different planning algorithms. Among the advanced features the tool allows to easily define the coupling between degrees of freedom, the dynamic simulation and the integration with task planers. It is principally being used in the research of motion planning strategies for dexterous dual arm robotic systems.

Main Features

1. Uses OMPL suite of planners (geometric and control based)
2. Uses PQP or FCL for collision detection
3. Uses Coin3D for visualization
4. Uses ODE physics engine
5. Robot models are defined using urdf (or DH parameters coded in an XML file, deprecated)
6. Describes robots as kinematic trees with a mobile base (SE3xRn configuration space)
7. Geometry is described in VRML files (if the ASSIMP package is available, many other formats like DAE or STL are also supported).
8. Allows multi-robot systems
9. Allows the coupling of degrees of freedom
10. Can be encapsuled as a ROS node

Credits

Service and Industrial Robotics (SIR)
Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering (IOC)
Universitat Polirecnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Barcelona, Spain
Version 1.0 was developed in collaboration with the Escuela Colombiana de Ingenieria "Julio Garavito" placed in Bogota D.C. Colombia

Contact: Prof. Jan Rosell (email: jan.r.nosp@m.osel.nosp@m.l@upc.nosp@m..edu)

External Documentation

Webpage: sir.upc.edu/kautham

Paper: The Kautham Project: A teaching and research tool for robot motion planning (pdf)

Examples

Simple examples: 2D free-flying robots

Simple examples: 3D free-flying robot / 2-link manipulator

Complex examples: Multiple robots / dual-arm robots / hand-arm systems / virtual bronchoscopes