General keyboard commands

Most commands are given by pressing a single key on the keyboard while the mouse pointer is inside the graphics window. Make sure that the graphics window is in input/selection mode. (If keyboard commands seem not to work, either click on the arrow in the top right corner of the graphics window or press ESC while the mouse pointer is in the graphics window.) For some commands below, the key to be pressed is in parentheses.

ESC

Switch between camera control (examination mode) and keyboard/mouse control (input/selection mode). In examination mode, the mouse can be used to rotate/move/zoom the entire scene. Keyboard/mouse mode is necessary to invoke all other commands below.

F1

Toggle parameter/Cartesian/target mode (see ).

F2

Invokes the planner on all successive pairs of key configurations in the 'Plan config' list (see ). Upon success, the planner inserts additional, non-key configurations into the 'Plan config' list to make it a collision-free path.

F3

Smoothes the path in 'Plan config'. The smoother does not remove key configurations.

F4

Plan + smoothe (equals pressing F2 and then F3)

F5

Start/stop animation of the path in 'Plan config'.

F6

Reset animation (move to first configuration in 'Plan config')

F11

Freeze/unfreeze current link. This affects the currently selected (picked) joint (see ).

F12

Freeze/unfreeze currently selected (picked) robot (see ).

SPACE

Change the value of the control step size. This value affects the robot's position control. Pressing SPACE iterates through a set of possible values, in powers of 10.

NUM5

Identical to SPACE.

(D)elta

Change the collision checker delta-value. This is a minimum workspace clearance required to bound the running time of the adaptive collision checker. Also, if compiled with DO_TOLERANCE_TEST, this value is used in the tolerance test of the simple (constant epsilon) segment checker. After pressing 'D', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value.

(E)psilon

(may not appear if compiled with ADAPT_COLLCHECKER). Change the segment collision checker epsilon value. This is the (constant) c-space resolution for the simple segment checker. After pressing E, move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value.

(R)ho

Change sampling window size of the planner. This is the size of the window (for each DOF) within which the local neighbors of a milestone are sampled. After pressing 'R', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value.

(M)ax. planner iter.

Change the maximum number of planner iterations. When reaching this number without having found a path, the planner gives up. To change the value, press 'M', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value. The default value works for many simple planning problems. For difficult planning problems, one may need to increase this parameter to a higher value.

Sm(O)othe steps

Change the number of attempted shortcut steps performed by the path smoother. This parameter does only affect the smoother. After pressing 'O', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value.

(A)nimsteps (max.)

Change the animation speed (higher values result in slower animation). After pressing 'A', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a new value.

Sample (F)ree random config

Sample a random free configuration for the current configuration shown in the graphics window. Note: this changes the configuration that is displayed in the graphics window but does not affect the 'Plan config' and 'Database config' lists.

(B)ounding boxes (OBB/RSS/off)

Toggle the displayed bounding volumes. By default, the top-level bounding volumes of all robots/obstacles are shown only. Use the '-b' option (see ) to show BVs of a different level instead. Note that RSSs are not shown as RSSs. Instead, their smallest enclosing OBBs are shown. Pressing 'B' repeatedly several times shows OBBs, then slightly bigger OBBs (those enclosing the RSSs), next no BVs, then again OBBs and so on.

(T)raced end-effector path on/off

Show/hide the paths traced by all robots' trace points (see documentation on how to create new robots in doc/mpk_new/index.html).

(I)mage snapshot...

Save a snapshot of the current scene (Unix version only). This requires the ImageMagick program 'convert' be installed. After pressing 'I', move the mouse pointer to the shell window and enter a file name, e.g., 'test.jpg'.

(V)ideo file name

Use this command to enter a file name (e.g., 'test.jpg') if you would like to create a sequence of snapshots during animation (useful for creating videos). Sequential numbers will be added to distinguish the files. Set the file name to '-' to disable dumping video frames. Note: like the 'Image snapshot' option above, this option requires the 'convert' program. Furthermore, it will slow down the animation considerably (for each frame, an image file will be saved). To enter the video file name, press 'V' and then move the mouse pointer inside the shell window.

(Q)uit

Exits the program. The current configuration database 'Database config' is saved in a file. By default, this file has the same name base as the scene file plus a '.conf' extension. An alternative name can be specified using the '-db' option.