July 8, 1996

Rewrote the GL simulator in OpenGL (Mesa) so that the graphica pieces
can run under Linux or any other os that supports X11.


July 2, 1996

I have gone through and written wrapper scripts to greatly simplify
and automate setting up models, running the planner, running the
planner in parallel on a heterogeneous distributed network of
machines, and postprocessing the results.


Apr. 5, 1996

This afternoon I ran a simple path (generated by the planner) on the
actual real robot.  This is kind of a milestone.  All the basic
mechanisms are in place for setting up the environment, generating a
plan, and executing the plan on the real arm.


Mar. 16, 1995

Scaled down the dimensions in armsim to match the dimensions in the
planner.  Each cube is now 3cm instead of 2cm.  Added collision
checking back into the planner and all seems well with the world.

The Gophers are tied 56-56 with 0:03 seconds left in their first round
NCAA tournament game.  I am "watching" via the world-wide-web.

Now, I am generating seemingly good paths ... maybe things are back on
track.

The Gophers are tied 56-56 ... we are going to over time.  Overtime
...  58-61 with 1:40 left in OT.  Dohhhh!!!! They lost ... missed 4
three pointers in the last 27 seconds.


Mar. 10, 1995

Took a step or two away from the kinematics equation goal.  But, I did
some work on better integrating my equation visualization tool with
the planner.  This will make it much easier to tweak the equations
while making sure I don't mess something up.  Setting up the problem
correctly make solving it much easier.


Mar. 9, 1995

I dropped the kinematic equations into the planner.  I also specified
Chen-Fu's home position.  The robot starts in the correct spot ... so
far so good.  I then generated a simple plan to move to a near by
position.  The plan seemed reasonable ... I need to check to make sure
that the final position is where it is supposed to be.  I may have a
coordinate system backwards some place, but then again, I may be
mistaken. :)


Mar. 8, 1995

I massaged the forward kinematics equations so the results are
oriented properly.  They should be ready to drop into the planner.


Feb. 28, 1995

I now have a Tk application which draw a stick figure of the arm based
on my new kinematic equations.

I also have the arm simulation which has a nice 3d shaded
representation of the arm.

It is very important that the arm simulation and the kinematic
equations (which are used by the planner and represented by a stick
figure) are in exact agreement.

I have created a simple Tk controlling application which uses sliders
to select angles for the various joints.  This can be used to control
both the stick figure application & the nice 3d application.  This
helps me verify that the simulation and the kinematics equations
produce the same results for the same joint angles.  (i.e. joint
rotate the same direction, the robot is mounting the same way,
etc. etc.)


Feb. 27, 1995

Worked on "re-mounting" the arm in its correct position within the
graphics simulation.  The planner is next ...


Feb. 25, 1995

Built a little app in Tcl/Tk/C to visualize the results generated by
my new equations and verify they are correct.  So far everything looks
good.  The next step is to roll these into the planner -- making sure
everything is oriented correctly as per the real arm.


Feb. 15, 1995

Worked on regenerating the link equations for Dan Challou's planner.
Now I must test them. :) I approached things a bit differently, but my
code requires fewer calculations.  This is important because this code
is constantly being executed.  Note, there is still room for
improvement.


Feb. 14, 1995

Worked on allowing the graphics sim to read joint angles from stdin.
This allows me to pipe the output of the planner into the simulation
as it runs so I can see what it is up to.


Feb. 13, 1995

Worked on uni-planner/linkmeasures.h New robot is to big to fit in
workspace of 128x128x128 of 2cm cubes.  So, I redefined the dimensions
to be 128x128x128 of *3cm* cubes.  I will need to propagate the
changes throughout all the input files.


Jan 25, 1995

Updated the graphics in the graphical simulation to include lighting
models and garough(sp?) shading.


Jan 20, 1995

Updated the dimensions in the graphical simulation.  Still need to
refine the gripper model.