A Domain Specific Language for kinematic models and fast implementations of robot dynamics algorithms

Rigid body dynamics algorithms play a crucial role in several components of a robot controller and simulations. Real time constraints in high frequency control loops and time requirements of specific applications demand these functions to be very efficient. Despite the availability of established algorithms, their efficient implementation for a specific robot still is a tedious and error-prone task. However, these components are simply necessary to get high performance controllers. To achieve efficient yet well maintainable implementations of dynamics algorithms we propose to use a domain specific language to describe the kinematics/dynamics model of a robot. Since the algorithms are parameterized on this model, executable code tailored for a specific robot can be generated, thanks to the facilities available for DSLs. This approach allows the users to deal only with the high level description of their robot and relieves them from problematic hand-crafted development; resources and efforts can then be focused on open research questions. Preliminary results about the generation of efficient code for inverse dynamics will be presented as a proof of concept of this approach.