Is it possible to communicate with a robot leg through MATLAB?

If I build a robot in MATLAB using the Robotics Toolbox, can I use the code to communicate with the servos directly?

I started using the toolbox to understand the inverse kinematics of the 4 DoF robot leg so that I coul have a check of the solution that I was working on deriving. However, being that MATLAB has the inverse kinematics solvers, I was wondering if I could just use these functions to solve for the joint angles based on the desired end pose?

If I cannot communicate directly, can I develope a pre-preprogrammed gate or trajectory for each leg of the robot and then send the values of function to the robot/servos?

If anyone has any experience with either of these schemes and has insights, I would greatly appreciate this.

I am currently working to understand one robot leg, and then I will adapt to the whole body of a modified hexapedal robot. This is the leg that I am using: http://www.lynxmotion.com/p-802-4dof-t-hex-leg-kit-pair-no-servos.aspx

[Karsh Tharyani]

Hi Jake,

Are you expecting C code out of a MATLAB function which returns a joint configuration given an end-effector pose?

Karsh

[Jake Keiper]

The goal is to use a Raspberry Pi to control the robot. So this will be running Python. I was wondering if matlab had the abbility to directly communicate with the servos so that initial testing can be done. In addition, if MATLAB can solve the neccesary IK and provide a solution data set, I thought I might be able to take that data set that represents the trajectory and use it somehow. I am new to all of this so I am not sure what direction to go nor what questions to ask.

Answer 1

[Karsh Tharyani]

Hi Jake,

This Documentatoin link mentions the available IK solvers in MATLAB via the Robotics Systems Toolbox: https://www.mathworks.com/help/robotics/inverse-kinematics.html . Note that the Inverse Kinematics Simullink block is also available to the user.

You can interface with the Raspberry Pi via this support package which can be installed as an Add-On: https://www.mathworks.com/hardware-support/raspberry-pi-simulink.html

I hope these help, but if you need further clarifications or want to clarify your use case further, please do not hesitate to reach Technical Support https://www.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html.

Best,

Karsh