PUMA 560 Matlab Simulations

Two MATLAB GUIs for exploring serial‑robot kinematics with Peter Corke's Robotics Toolbox — one for a teaching RRR arm (3 revolute joints) and one for the classic Unimation PUMA 560 (6 joints), animated with the real STL link meshes from the ARTE library.

What the GUIs Do

puma560_gui

The PUMA 560 GUI (built with GUIDE) runs a full forward / inverse kinematics round trip and shows the robotics maths along the way:

• Forward kinematics — type the six joint angles (degrees). The GUI builds a smooth joint‑space trajectory from the previous pose with jtraj (10 steps), and at every step computes the manipulator Jacobian (jacobe), its determinant and its rank — so a configuration near a singularity shows up as a rank drop. It then animates the path and reads the end‑effector pose back out of fkine, reporting X/Y/Z and roll/pitch/yaw (tr2rpy).
• Statics — an optional force / torque vector [fx fy fz tx ty tz] at the end effector is mapped to the joint torques that would hold it, via the Jacobian transpose (q_add = J' * force), and folded into the trajectory.
• Inverse kinematics — type a target Cartesian pose; the GUI solves the joint angles with ikine and animates the jtraj path to it.
• 2D or 3D — a toggle switches between the fast wire‑frame plot and the textured STL model; the frames are written out to build the GIFs below.

RRR_Robot_GUI

A stripped‑down version for a 3‑revolute (RRR) arm — the same forward / inverse kinematics on a robot simple enough to check by hand, with the link geometry defined directly through Link / SerialLink.

Repository

To get a copy of this project you can use git, and clone the repository:

                  git clone https://github.com/leonardoward/PUMA560-MATLAB-Simulations.git
                

Or you can download the zip file with the project and extract it to get the files.

Prerequisites

1. MATLAB (Developed using MATLAB R2015b)
2. Peter Corke's Robotics Toolbox
3. ARTE Library: This library contains the needed STL models for the PUMA560.

Installation

Peter Corke's Robotics Toolbox

• Download the mltbx file, this project was developed using RTB-10.3.1.
• From within the MATLAB file browser double click on this file (mltbx), it will install and configure the paths correctly.

ARTE Library (STL Models)

• Download the zip file with the ARTE Library.
• Copy the folder /path/to/arte/arte/robots/UNIMATE/, this folder contains the STL models. A copy of this folder can be found on the root path of this repository.
• Paste the folder with the STL models in the path /path/to/MATLAB/version/toolbox/phased/phased/data/ARTE/, in this case the version is R2015b.

To check that is installed correctly run in the MATLAB terminal:

                  > mdl_puma560
                  > p560.model3d
                  ans =
                  UNIMATE/puma560
                

RRR Robot Manipulator

Matlab simulation of the RRR Robot Manipulator.

GUI for the RRR Robot Manipulator.

PUMA 560

Matlab simulation of the Puma 560 Robot Manipulator.

GUI for the Puma 560 Robot Manipulator.