Using DH parameters to visualize a robot

Question

Suppose I receive a table containing the DH parameters of a 5 DOF robot. Am I able to reconstruct the geometry of this robot and actually visualize it (i.e. all the mechanical joints and links), using MATLAB or another tool?

I was thinking that I could link all the origins of the frames with a line to get this raw visualization, but apparently, it's more complicated than that.

From what I have been studying, the origin of the DH frame assignment is not always exactly linked to the mechanical construction of the robot, but it needs to respect some specific rules and can even be located "outside" the robot, or two frames may have the same origin in space.

Answer 1

Yes you can visualive it in matlab, using robot toolbox for Matlab here.

Visualization would look like this

And code example for MDH table for my 6 DOF Serial manipulator :

a = 40/1000;
b = 81/1000;
c = 130/1000;
d = 18/1000;
e = 166/1000;
f = 31/1000;
g = 95/1000;

p = SerialLink([...
Revolute('d',b,'a',0,'alpha',0,'modified');...
Revolute('d',0,'a',a,'alpha',deg2rad(90),'offset',pi/4,'modified');...
Revolute('d',0,'a',c,'alpha',0,'modified');...
Revolute('d',e+f,'a',d,'alpha',deg2rad(90),'modified');...
Revolute('d',0,'a',0,'alpha',deg2rad(-90),'modified');...
Revolute('d',g,'a',0,'alpha',deg2rad(90),'modified');],...
'name','6 DOF')
p.teach([0 0 0 0 0 0])