R-shell: a UNIX-based development environment for robotics

R-shell is an application-oriented extension of the regular UNIX shell that provides robotics-related data-manipulation and world-modeling capabilities. Its main purpose is to assist in the preparation of input data for the testing and evaluation of algorithms in the area of robotics. R-shell maintains a set of variables which can be defined and modified through a set of UNIX-like commands, and later accessed from independent user programs. R-shell commands generally fall into three groups: general commands, object commands and manipulator commands. General commands manipulate R-shell variables through various robotic-related and algebraic transformations. Object commands provide for the creation of a kinematic model of the robot environment. Manipulator commands define manipulator types, create manipulators, and perform various kinematic computations