Actin is a software toolkit for designing, simulating, and controlling robots, created by the American firm Energid Technologies of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In addition to their headquarters in the United States, the firm opened an office in India to sell Actin in Asia (e.g. Japan).
Video Actin (software)
Development
Actin began as simulation software and control software, during contract work by Energid for NASA's Johnson Space Center, funded by the Small Business Innovation Research legislation. Actin was developed for NASA robots, and the software was first demonstrated on a Mitsubishi PA-10 robot while under development for the Robonaut 1 project at NASA.
Prior to 2011, the firm also began selling Actin as a design and control software package for robotics applications, with an emphasis on user-friendly design-optimization. The target markets were the military, agricultural, healthcare (see also medical robot), and industrial segments.
Maps Actin (software)
Features
Actin is a robotics software toolkit (a type of software development kit), which provides features for designing robotic control systems, and for simulating those robots in software.
Control system optimization
Actin can be used for control of most kinds of robots, and provides functions related to robot motion, collision avoidance, and overcoming joint limitations. Actin supports an unlimited number of joints, degrees of freedom for those joints, and branches.
Actin software supports the following communication protocols for connecting the human operator (or autonomous agent software control system) to physical robotic hardware: Modbus, EtherCAT, CANopen, Serial, Data Distribution Service, UDP, and TCP.
Simulation of robot designs
In addition to the robot-control features, Actin also provides a simulator for the robot which is being designed. This capability allows roboticists to test their designs in a virtual environment via simulation, prior to actually building a physical robot which implements the design.
Applications
In 2012, Actin was used to implement the robot control system of the Cyton Gamma series of robotic arms (manufactured by Robai which is a subsidiary of Energid), intended for the remote inspection, manufacturing, and healthcare markets. The control system for the Gamma provides a PC-based GUI in 3D for the consumer to use when operating the robot arm. The arm has seven joints (and thus seven degrees of freedom), which according to CNET gives the arm "more dexterity" than if it had fewer joints. However, the use of that many joints (which the manufacturer calls 'kinematically redundant'--see robot kinematics and kinematic chain) increases the computational workload that the control system implemented in Actin must be able to handle. To work, the Gamma must be connected to a PC via a USB cable, where the robot arm can be programmed via the GUI, and where the processor of the PC can perform some of the complex computations that implement the control system.
See also
- Robotics simulator and Off-line programming
- Real-time computing and Real-time Control System
- Robotic motion and Robot kinematics
- Denavit-Hartenberg parameters and CAD systems (e.g. SolidWorks)
Notes
References
External links
- Official product homepage
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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