RBDL API Overview

To create a model in RBDL a set of physical properties associating with each body is required. The constructors of the class Body enable the creation of bodies based on the following information:

• mass of each link
• The location of the Center Of Mass (COM) for each link
• The principal moments of inertia of each link

Joints are also created in a similar manner by using the constructors of the Joint class. There are several different joint types available in RBDL, but the most common ones are revolute, prismatic, and fixed joints. The creation of the kinematic chain is done by specifying the parent body by its id, the transformation from the parent's origin to the joint origin, the joint specification as an object, and the child body itself. Two methods are available for adding bodies to the model:

• RigidBodyDynamics::Model::AddBody()
• RigidBodyDynamics::Model::AppendBody()

In the first method, the parent body id should be explicitly specified whereas, in the second method, the previously added body is considered as the parent for the child body.