README

RoboView <http://www9.in.tum.de/~kleinehe/roboview.html> is a
kinematic chain viewer based on the Orocos KDL <http://orocos.org/kdl>
library.

You use can use it to display kinematic chains and test the forward
and inverse kinematics using KDL.

It was written by Jonathan Kleinehellefort for the Technische
Universität München.

INSTALLING
==========

You will need Python 2.4, PyGTK <http://www.pygtk.org/>, KDL with
Python bindings <http://orocos.org/kdl> and VTK with Python bindings
<http://www.vtk.org/> in order to run RoboView.

You can (but do not have to) install RoboView using distutils (you may
need root permissions for that):

    python setup.py install --prefix=/usr/local

See ``python setup.py --help'' for more information.

some packages you MAY need:

apt-get install python-vtk python-pyvtk python-gtk2-dev python-gtkglext1

RUNNING
=======

To run RoboView, call it with an Python file describing a kinematic chain:

    roboview robodef.py

Where robodef.py looks something like this (see KDL documentation for
details):

---
from PyKDL import *
from math import pi

segments = [
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotX(pi/2), Vector(0, -.045, .225))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotY(-pi/2), Vector(0, 0, .215))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotY(pi/2), Vector(.135, 0, 0))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotY(-pi/2), Vector(0, 0, .175))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotY(pi/2), Vector(.1, 0, 0))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.TransZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotY(pi/2), Vector(.1, 0, 0))),
    Segment(Joint(Joint.RotZ),
            Frame(Rotation.RotZ(pi/2), Vector(0, 0, .165)))]
---

USER INPUT
==========

Left-button drag on background      rotate camera
Middle-button drag on background    move camera
Button drag on joint                change joint value
Left-button drag on end effector    rotate end effector (tries to do
                                        inverse kinematics)
Middle-button drag on end effector  translate end effector (tries to do
                                        inverse kinematics)
Key R                               reset camera
Key Q                               quit