Project objective:
The main purpose of this project is to deliver an inexpensive and fast simulation software for one of the most widely used industrial robots on the market. Unimation's Puma 560 can be found in almost any working environment where agility as well as precision and strength are an issue. Not only is it true that one can find this manipulator as an industrial asset, but it is also the case that Puma is highly utilized for experimental purposes. Due to its high standards and impeccable service record, Puma was the primary candidate for this research project.
A primary idea was to develop an application which could not only perform the simulation and necessary calculations, but which could also be able to run on any platform without the recompilation of the code. For this reason, Java had been chosen as the development platform. This relatively new and exotic language fit entirely to its purpose. Giving the strength of a highly sophisticated, object oriented language, it perfectly delivered multiplatform support for the application. The only drawback, as it was later discovered, was Java's interpreted nature, the cause of sluggishness in the 3D object manipulation and display. More will be discussed about problems as this one throughout the course of this paper.