A new paradigm for open robotics research and education with the C plus plus OOML

For many years robotics has been benefited from the open source community. Software community projects like Player, Stage, Gazebo, ROS, or OpenCV are present in most robotic applications. In recent years this trend has also been initiated among electronic and mechanical developments (open hardware). The Arduino development platform is a good example of a successful hardware project with a great community of developers and users around it. The apparition of personal 3D printers is bringing the open source philosophy to the fabrication of physical things as well. This new technology is in need of new designing tools to take advantage of it. In this paper we are presenting the C++ Object Oriented Mechanics Library (OOML), a tool to design mechanical components, taking into account the needs and requirements of these emerging technologies. These designs can be easily shared, reused, and modified. The OOML brings together the advantages of (1) modelling things through code, (2) the object oriented programming paradigm, and (3) the power of C++. In the OOML, mechanical parts are described as geometrical combinations of basic primitives. Once a part is defined, fabrication files can be generated in order to print, or mechanize it. Models could also be used for simulation, visualization, structural analysis, etc.