🤖 RobotLibrary

RobotLibrary is a C++ library for modeling and control of robots arms.

It is an ongoing project and we hope to add more features as time goes on.

Contents:

• Installation Instructions
  • Installing Eigen
  • Installing RobotLibrary
  • Using RobotLibrary in Another Project
• Sections of the Library
  • Control
  • Math
  • Model
  • Trajectory

Installation Instructions

Installing Eigen:

RobotLibrary uses Eigen 3.4. Installation procedure depends on the version of Ubuntu. For detailed information on installation instructions you can visit Otherwise you can go to the Eigen main page.

Ubuntu 20.04

If you're still using Ubuntu 20.04, you need to manually install Eigen 3.4.

First ensure prerequisites are installed:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y build-essential cmake git

Download version 3.4 directly (or from the webpage):

wget https://gitlab.com/libeigen/eigen/-/archive/3.4.0/eigen-3.4.0.tar.gz

Extract the downloaded file:

tar -xvf eigen-3.4.0.tar.gz
cd eigen-3.4.0

Now build and install:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
sudo make install

Ubuntu 22.04 and later

Eigen 3.4 is automatically installed on later versions of Ubuntu. In the command line you can run:

sudo apt install libeigen3-dev

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Installing RobotLibrary:

1. Clone this repository in to your working directory:

   git clone https://github.com/Woolfrey/software_robot_library.git

2. Navigate in to the folder:

   cd ~/<your_working_directory>/software_robot_library

3. Create a build directory and navigate in to it:

   mkdir build && cd build

4. Run the following commands in the build directory:

   cmake ..

   sudo make install

You should now be able to include different parts of the library in your C++ files.

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Using RobotLibrary in Another Project:

When using RobotLibrary classes in another project, it is necessary to link both Eigen and RobotLibrary when compiling executables. For example, we may want to use the KinematicTree class in the example.cpp of the following example project:

example_project/
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── build/
└── src/
    └── example.cpp

In the example.cpp file we can include the KinematicTree header file under RobotLibrary:

#include <RobotLibrary/KinematicTree.h>
...
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
     RobotLibrary::KinematicTree model("path/to/robot.urdf");
}

Then, in the CMakeLists.txt file, we must:

1. Tell the compiler to find both Eigen3 and RobotLibrary, and
2. Link RobotLibrary and Eigen3 to the executable that uses any RobotLibrary classes:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.8)
project(example)
...
find_package(Eigen3 REQUIRED)
find_package(RobotLibrary REQUIRED)

include_directories(${EIGEN3_INCLUDE_DIR}) 
...
add_executable(example src/example.cpp)
target_link_libraries(example RobotLibrary::RobotLibrary Eigen3::Eigen)

Inside the example_project/build folder it should be possible to compile the project:

cmake ..
make

This repository has some simple test code that demonstrates the use of different classes.

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