Hello all, I've recently been tasked with two KR-16 arms w/ KRC4 controllers, and kuka's (insanely expensive) SimPro software. In playing with things, I notice two glaring issues that I hope are simply things I haven't found yet--
1) No intelligent path planning?! It seems the SimPro package has nothing in terms of path planning whatsoever-- you can program via their inline forms or execute a python script, but it doesn't appear anywhere that I can specify end effector targets or goals and have the software determine collision-free paths. I can press "play" and see that I'm wrong and the thing collides, which...I guess is better than nothing? barely? Its not like this tech isn't out there (PRM, RRT...) Am I missing something?
2) Realtime/Feedback/Program Execution Control? In my application, I'll have a predetermined path of "ideal" points in R3/SE3/6xSO2, but due to fixturing errors, thermal expansion (welding) etc the actual position may be off, which I'd like to correct via sensing/feedback. It appears at first glance that everything has to be done with something simplistic like (pardon the pseudocode):
#DECL deltaVec = ideal_pos - actual_pos
WHILE magnitude(deltaVec) > epsilon:
LIN_REL deltaVec
while being uber-diligent about my advance pointer and timing everything (network packets included) just right...and even that isn't ideal given a likely lag. Plus I'm not even sure this is possible within a program that's already trying to execute the predefined path...Is there anything to be done here, other than throwing money at it (RSI-XML) and spending a good chunk of dev time in servoland? Admittedly, I'm a bit wary of this approach given the taste the insanely underfeatured simpro has left in my mouth...
Would I be happier jumping the shark and going with something like OROCOS, given that I've got a good chunk of controls engineering, math, and embedded systems resources avail?
Thanks for any and all tips, tricks, hints, or recommendations.