Web-based VR Environment for Simulation and Visualization of Construction Manipulator Motion

The paper presents a case study of visualization and animation of results of inverse kinematics simulation of a redundant construction manipulator, represented as a mechanical system with four degrees of freedom. The boom consists of four rigid links, interconnected by rotational joints. The rotation of the links is described by relative joint angles and their values, together with the links lengths, determine the manipulator working range. For a prescribed vertical straight-line trajectory, the inverse kinematics task at the velocity level is solved by the use of weighted pseudoinverse matrix. To compensate the deviations from the desired trajectory, the inverse kinematics equation is modified by adding terms, proportional to the difference between the current and the desired position of the boom end point. By the use of the contemporary Web technologies a VR environment for simulation and visualization of the obtained results is developed. It consists of a started under Common Gateway Interface Matlab executable file placed on a server, a Web page with input form, an X3D model of the manipulator. The functionality of the application on the user side is provided by a JavaScript file. The produced VR environment is easy reused and shared with other users and thus considerably facilitates the design, investigation and e-learning of such type of system.