I am designing a new mechanism similar to robot arm. It would be a 6 or 7 axis with arms but not the same with traditional articulated arms. As a result, new DH matrix,and inverse kinematics involve. I would like to consult the robot professionals in this forum that do you suggest any simulation tool of this mechanism?
I plan to start with start and end points. Then I will do a trapezoid velocity plan and take sample points with sampling time along the path. After that, I would like to transfer these sampling points to motor joints by DH matrix and inverse kinematics. Finally I would do some basic 3D animation to visualize the movement temporally. I do not plan to simulate controller behavior because in my application motor drivers deal with it. I only need to focus on sending reasonable commands to motor drivers.
In my opinion, Matlab, octave, VC++, and some third-party tools are candidates. Starting from ground zero would be a time-consuming work. I would appreciate if any experts can share a tool or open source code from his or her experience. I did some search on Matlab robotics toolbox but I am not sure if it fits my need because it is expensive and optimized for ROS. In Octave there are also some robotics toolbox but I am not sure about what it can do and what it cannot.