RTB 9.10 released

[Peter Corke]

The long delayed next dot release is out.  Please note that here may be missing dependencies or other small defects in the distro, please let me know, and I'll tweak the release as required over the next week or so.  Major features:

• tested on 14b (I know, 15a will be here real soon)
  
• A major pass over all the documentation working on clarity and consistency.
  

• startup rvc now checks whether an update to RTB is available.

• Fixed the bug in SerialLink.plot for prismatic joints and modified DH parameters where the links were missing or in the wrong place.

• New methods for SerialLink

  • –  edit which presents all the parameters as a table in a figure window and allows interactive editing.

  • –  fellipse andvellipse which respectively plot the force and velocity ellipsoid of the robot.

  • –  trchain which describes forward kinematics as a minimal series of ele- mentary transforms.

  • –  numerical inverse kinematic: ikcon and ikunc for constrained and un-constrained joint angles, based on the MATLAB Optimisation Toolbox. These provide a good alternative to the existing method ikine. Con- tributed by Bryan Moutrie.

  • –  pay and paycap to determine the effect of payload and maximum pay- load capability. Contributed by Bryan Moutrie.

  • –  collisionswhichinterfacestothepublicdomainpackagepHRIWARE (by Bryan Moutrie) to perform collision checking between a robot arm and static and moving objects which are described by simple 3D shape primitives.

• A new function called models which lists all the robot models and their key- words. Allows searching by keywords. Becoming useful as the number of model files increases.

• Prototype models for Baxter, NAO and Kuka KR5 robots.

• New version of rtbdemo that uses a proper GUI.

• Update of the V-REP interface to support version 3.1.x and a demo created, see rtbdemo.

• An increasing number of functions now have a ’deg’ option which allows it to accept angle input in units of degrees rather than the default of radians.

• New Simulink blocks to support N-rotor flyers, eg. hexa- and octo-rotors. This includes a new control mixer block and a generalized N-rotor dynamics block. Graphics has been updated to render the appropriate number of rotors. The ve- hicle model structure must now include an element nrotors to specify the number of rotors.

• roblocks, the Toolbox Simulink block library is now a .slx file, rather than a .mdl file and all models have been updated to suit. Some older Simulink models had atrophied and have been updated. 

[Felipe]

Hi, Peter.

This is great news! Thank you!

I have just downloaded version 9.10, but I am missing the Simulink file "roblocks". So, simulation of mobile robots using systems like sl_drivepose and sl_quadrotor are not working.

Cheers,

Felipe.

[Peter Corke]

Felipe,

thanks for picking that up.  roblocks.slx is now included.

Also note that pHRIWARE 1.1 is now included in the distro.

If either of these are important to you, then re-download RTB 9.10.

peter

[Valerio Modugno]

Peter thank you very much for the correction of the base rotation in the last release of Robotics Toolbox!

Valerio

[Vince DiLuoffo]

Hi Peter,
I tried to run the quad demo on a linux platform running 2014a student version, and received the following error:

--- runscript <-- /opt/matlab/R2014a/toolbox/rvctools/robot/demos/quadrotor.m
%%begin

% A quadrotor is a simple flying vehicle with 4 propellers with their thrust
% axes pointing upwards.  This demo shows an animation of a flying quadrotor
% with a nested control system.

>> sl_quadrotor
 
Warning: Model 'roblocks' was created with a newer version (R2014b) of Simulink
To create a model that is compatible with this version of Simulink, load the model in Simulink R2014b and
select File > Export Model to > Previous Version.
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148
Warning: roblocks (blockdiagram.xml, line 69): block_diagram does not have a parameter named 'ShowMarkup'
in group 'EditorSettings'
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148
Warning: roblocks (blockdiagram.xml, line 106): block_diagram does not have a parameter named
'CovUseTimeInterval' in group 'Verification'
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148
Warning: roblocks (blockdiagram.xml, line 107): block_diagram does not have a parameter named
'CovStartTime' in group 'Verification'
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148
Warning: roblocks (blockdiagram.xml, line 108): block_diagram does not have a parameter named
'CovStopTime' in group 'Verification'
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148
Warning: The character encoding ISO-8859-1 used by model 'roblocks' differs from the MATLAB session
character encoding UTF-8. To check for problems which might corrupt the model use the "Simulink Model
File Integrity" checks in the Model Advisor.
  In runscript>evalSavedText at 203
  In runscript at 186
  In rtbdemo at 148

% Running the simulation shows the vehicle takes off and flying in a cirle.
>> sim('sl_quadrotor');
 
Quadrotor parameters loaded by InitFcn
error in script at line error in executing demo script

ans =

Error using runscript>evalSavedText (line 203)
Error evaluating 'InitFcn' callback of block_diagram 'sl_quadrotor'.

Error in runscript (line 186)
            evalSavedText(line, lineNum);

Error in rtbdemo (line 148)
                runscript(script, opts{:})

Caused by:
    Error using runscript>evalSavedText (line 203)
    Undefined function or variable 'mdl_quadrotor'.

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Vince

[Peter Corke]

Vince,

sorry about the problems.  Two things going on.  Simulink files are very version specific, anything created with a particular version doesn't load nicely into a previous version.  I made these files with 2014b.  You could regress to RTB9.9 which was likely done with either 13b or 14a.

The other issue is related to the name of the model file.  I've tried to be more consistent with terminology, quadcopter is wrong (greek+latin), quadrotor is right.  RTB9.10 initially has a model looking for mdl_quadrotor but I provided mdl_quadcopter.  That's fixed in a recent change to RTB9.10.  You can manually change the name of the file, or the InitFcn, as you see fit.

peter