This is the documentation of RBDL, the Rigid Body Dynamics Library. The library contains highly efficient code for both forward and inverse dynamics. It includes:

Recursive Newton Euler Algorithm
Composite Rigid Body Algorithm
Articulated Body Algorithm.

Furthermore it contains functions for forward and inverse kinematics and contact handling.

The code is written by Martin Felis <martin.felis@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de> and heavily inspired by the pseudo code of the book "Rigid Body Dynamics Algorithms" of Roy Featherstone.

The library comes with version 3 of the the Eigen math library. More information about it can be found here: http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/

Download :

You can download the most recent stable version as zip file from here:
https://bitbucket.org/rbdl/rbdl/get/default.zip

All development takes place on Bitbucket and you can follow RBDL's development here:
https://bitbucket.org/rbdl/rbdl

Recent Changes :

20. February 2013: removed too specialized RigidBodyDynamics::Body constructor (API version 1.1.0)
29. January 2013: added code for API Version Checking. Current is 1.0.0.
18. June 2012: added support of Lua Models
01. June 2012: added support of Fixed Joints
14. May 2012: fixed Body constructor as reported by Maxime Reis
04. April 2012: added benchmark tool for CRBA
01. March 2012: added multi degree of freedom Joint Modeling
06. Februry 2012: restructured constraint handling using RigidBodyDynamics::ConstraintSet
24. January 2012: implemented compact and fast representation of RigidBodyDynamics::Math::SpatialTransform

Example

A simple example for creation of a model and computation of the forward dynamics using the C++ API can be found here.

Another example that uses the Lua Models Addon can be found here.

API reference separated by functional modules

Licensing

The library is published under the very permissive zlib free software license which should allow you to use the software wherever you need. Here is the full license text:

RBDL - Rigid Body Dynamics Library
Copyright (c) 2011-2012 Martin Felis <martin.felis@iwr.uni-heidelberg.de>

This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of this software.

Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose,
including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it
freely, subject to the following restrictions:

   1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
   claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
   in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
   appreciated but is not required.

   2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
   misrepresented as being the original software.

   3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source
   distribution.