Premium members, rejoice! It’s time for another Activetuts+ Premium tutorial. This time, you’ll learn how to use forward kinematics to create a robotic arm – in this case, the example is for an excavator, but you can use the techniques you’ll learn in all sorts of situations. It follows on nicely from our previous tutorials on linear kinematics and inverse kinematics. Read on to see what you’ll learn…

Forward Kinematics (FK) is a positioning algorithm. It’s not as complicated as it sounds if you associate it to sequence of actions from an excavator operator’s point of view. Beginning with the node closest to it, the operator configures the orientation of each node in the hope that the scoop will reach the location intended. Often, several attempts are made before achieving success. FK is an algorithm to perform such task.

In this tutorial, we shall attempt the implementation of FK and apply it onto an excavator from a 2D side view. Having understood this algorithm, one can easily adapt it to a 3D environment. Enjoy!

Preview

Let’s take a look at the final result we will be working towards:

Press the space key to scroll through nodes (the current one is marked by a red bracket). While you are at it, press the arrow keys to change the angle.

This tutorial covers the following:

• Explanation for FK’s Mathematical background.
• Hard-coded implementation of the FK.
• Object-oriented class to implement FK algorithm.
• Demonstration of FK class used in a project.
• Graphics (as seen above) applied to the demonstration.

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