SYMOFROS:: Software architecture and real time issues

The complexity and the level of efforts needed to generate high fidelity models (dynamics and kinematics) of a robot can be considerable. The model creation is a time consuming task in the development of advanced controllers. Engineers would rather concentrate on controller than model development. To support R&D activities, the Robotics group in the Space Technologies Program at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has developed a tool allowing automatic generation of the kinematics and dynamics equations of any kind of tolopology in short time. SYMOFROS1 is a software tool allowing the modeling of mechanisms in tree topology with closed kinematic loops and non-holonomic constraints.