Mitsubishi RM-501 Movemaster II Robot Simulator

A cross-platform simulator for the iconic Mitsubishi RM-501 Movemaster II robot arm, popular in the 1980s for industrial assembly, handling, and inspection tasks.

Overview

• Five-axis robot arm simulation
• Interactive OpenGL GUI
• Real-time keyboard, gamepad, and 3D mouse control
• Forward and inverse kinematics
• Simple and portable C codebase

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Features

Working:

• OpenGL GUI
• Control via keyboard, gamepad, or 3D mouse
• Double-precision forward/inverse kinematics
• Minimal C source files for easy portability

Experimental/Unfinished:

• Trajectory planner (by Stefan Wilhelm)
• Command-line ncurses TUI
• LinuxCNC HAL integration
• Messaging: ØMQ, Eclipse MQTT, and others

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Required: OpenGL, SDL2, SDL2_ttf
• Optional: ncurses, libpng, ZeroMQ, Eclipse Mosquitto, LinuxCNC HAL

Installation (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt -y install git mesa-common-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev libsdl2-image-dev freeglut3-dev
sudo apt -y install fonts-dejavu-core
sudo apt -y install libncursesw5-dev libpng-dev libzmq5 libzmq3-dev libpaho-mqtt-dev mosquitto linuxcnc-uspace-dev
sudo usermod -aG input $USER # joystick access
git clone https://github.com/koppi/rm501.git

Compile & Run

cd rm501
make
./rm501

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Controls

Key(s)	Action
Esc / Ctrl-C	Quit
Tab	Toggle 3D view
Q/W/E/R/T, A/S/D/F/G	+/- joint values (waist, shoulder, etc.)
I/K, arrow keys	Move end-effector
C/V	Circle motion / Reset circle
N/H	Move to nest/home positions
O/L	Open/close tool
Shift	Move all joints in parallel

• SpaceNavigator: Enable HAVE_SPACENAV
• Gamepad: Enable HAVE_JOYSTICK
• Messaging (MQTT/ØMQ): Enable HAVE_MQTT / HAVE_ZMQ
• LinuxCNC: Enable HAVE_HAL

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Contributors

• Jakob Flierl (koppi)
• Stefan Wilhelm (trajectory planner)

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License

LGPL-2.1-or-later. See LICENSE.