Included with the Config++ interpreter is the Biobot library, a collection of C++ classes for simulating the dynamics of multi-segment robotic devices. The classes were written primarily to aid in the design and evaluation of animal or robotic control algorithms and have been "wrapped" for use with the Config++ language so that they can be assembled and reused as desired.. Note that these classes perform dynamics simulation, meaning that objects have mass and inertia and react to applied forces, rather than kinematic simulation, which simulations trajectories but not forces.

Only a fairly narrow class of robots or animals - those that consist of segments linked together at revolute joints - are supported. There is no support for wheeled, or flying, pogo stick, or similar robots, nor for flying, swimming, or crawling animals. Contact resolution is limited to point contact between segment endpoints and a surface mesh. Within this narrow scope however, one can design arbitrary robots with various numbers of joints and segments (bipeds, quadrupeds, hexapods, etc.).

The physical parameters of a walking object to be simulated -- the size, construction, and placement of its legs and body, and the number, location, and properties of sensors and actuators (including spiking sensory neurons and simple neuromuscular models in biological simulations) are specified in separate configuration files accessed by the simulation during initialization. In this way, the system can be made to emulate a wide variety of articulated robots or arthropod animals.

Like the simulation system itself, the code for controllers that regulate the operation of the simulated body may be written in C++, but controllers interface with the simulation in such a way that users need no knowledge of the simulation code. A user can assemble and attach multiple controllers to a single robot and vary the properties of the controller input and output in order to simulate transmission delays, different sampling rates, and noise. Furthermore, controllers can influence the simulation from the level of trajectory planning to that of detailed control of individual muscles.

To run this program you need a PC with a 486 processor or better (speed of execution is the only consideration), running a version of Linux that supports ELF binaries. You also need to have X Windows installed. The precompiled program, the demos, the documentation, and the source code together will require approximately 12 Mb of free space on your hard drive.

If you wish to compile and run the source code you will also need to have the following packages installed: the FLTK user interface library (http://www.fltk.org), the Mesa graphics library (http://www.mesa3d.org), and GCC version 2.9 or greater (http://gcc.gnu.org). Compiling the source code requires approximately 20 Mb of free space.

The downloadable file contains everything you need to run the software. It is zipped and tarred. When you unzip and untar the file, you will have a main directory configpp/ and four subdirectories with the following contents:

In addition to the compiled program itself and the source code for it, you will receive seven demonstration files that illustrate various features of the software, documentation, and pdf copies of two published papers that describe the software and its application to robotics in greater detail. The documentation briefly describes scripting languages and our particular application, the classes and variables in our software (especially the robotic simulation classes), how to add to the program, instructions for compiling the source code, and a guide to the demonstration files that are included.

Follow this link to download the software. The file you download will have been tarred and zipped. After you have downloaded it, move the file to a directory where you want the program files to reside. From the command line, type gunzip [filename.tar.gz -- no spaces]. This should leave you with [filename.tar]. From the command line again type tar -xf [filename.tar -- again, no spaces]. This should leave you with a new directory named configpp/ in which all of the package files have been placed.

The README.txt file in that directory repeats the information about the subdirectories given previously. Further instructions for running the software are in the /configpp/doc subdirectory.

Please note that the authors of the program provide the software for non-commercial, research purposes only and as is. We make no claims as to utility or accuracy. A more complete disclaimer and license is provided with the downloaded documentation. By using the software you acknowledge that you accept the terms of the disclaimer and license.