EMC + SCARA robots?

[Sagar Behere <sagar_behere-at-yahoo.com>]

Hi all,

I am an undergraduate Indian student of mechanical
engineering.

I am creating a SCARA type robot, using stepper
motors. A SCARA robot has 4 axes...3 revolute (the
rotation is in horizontal plane i.e axis is vertical)
and one prismatic axis, which reciprocates in the
vertical direction.

So far, I was using rtai to move the stepper motors,
and I have written code which can move the end
effector of the robot to a particular co-ordinates in
space, at desired speed. Now, I wish to have a feature
where the robot can follow contours in 2D space. Since
writing this code is beyond my (extremely) limited
programming capabilities, I am thinking or using
linuxcnc and I have the following questions:

1) If I specify a path in 2D, using g-codes, will the
EMC be able to interpret this code and move the robot
accordingly? If so, will this be automagical? Or will
I have to write code which does something in between?
I mean, EMC can understand g-code and it can drive a
stepper motor. But there has to be "something" that
tells EMC the relations between the angles that the
stepper motors have turned, and the position of the
end effector. Direct and inverse kinematics of the
robot...for those familiar with the terminology.
Thus, lets say I have the g-code to draw a circle. But
emc must know exactly the angle through which each
motor must turn, so that the end effector describes
the desired circle.

2) Can EMC do this? If yes, how? If not, is there an
easy way to make it do this? how?

3) Is using EMC an overkill for this task? Will I be
better off writing all the necessary code on my own,
without using EMC?

4) In case 3 is true, is it possible to use only the
g-code interpreter part of the emc for my own
purposes? So that I can input a file to the g-code
interpreter and it'll parse it and call the necessary
functions... I read that the interpreter has
standalone capability, but I am not very clear on what
it means.

I am going to use the BDI EMC 2.18.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Stay Free,
Sagar

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