Article · February 010 doi: 10. 1109/conielecomp. 2010. 5440751 citations 23 reads 8,079 authors

Virtual Environment: 
Once the previous steps have been completed and the 
kinematics is programmed, the next step is to implement it in 
the virtual environment that includes; manipulator design, data 
showing and path following visualization. 
In order to successfully carry out the simulation, it is 
necessary to have a Matlab 2009 version that includes the full 
3D animation library.
Manipulator design: 
Here, the prototype is loaded by using the VR Sink 
block, where the model can be edited using the VRML editor. 
Due to the fact that the robot coming from the 
mechanical system is different to the assembly, the operations 
on the transformation from one link to other is different in this 
editor, therefore it is necessary to perform the next tasks: 
• Identify each links of the manipulator. 
• Leave only 2 main transformations: 
o
The transformation on the base which won’t be 
moved;
o
The link transformation where the movement chain is 
performed to get the mathematical parameters (this is 
variable depending on the robot to be used). 
Text Visualization:

To obtain the real-time data from the manipulator, we can 

use the VR Text Output. 
It is necessary to reference the virtual environment, also to 
introduce the variable names to be shown together with the 
variable format.
 
Path Following Visualization: 
 
To show the path that the robot follows in the simulation 
process, it is necessary that the desired target as well as the 
real target to be connected to the block named V Tracer. 
We need to connect x, y and z for the data acquisition. The 
type of path to be followed is selected and projected on the 
virtual environment; also, it is necessary to reference the name 
of the transformations in the manipulator’s design block to be 
represented in the workspace.